Die Trying
by G.E Waldo
Summary: Post Houses Head/Wilsons Heart. SPOILERS! Pre-slash. Hurt. The aftermath.
1. Chapter 1

Die Trying

Summary: Post Houses Head/Wilsons Heart. SPOILERS! Pre-slash. Hurt.

Pairings: H/C H/W.

Rating: (for now) General. Some language.

XXXXXXX

_**"And who's gonna' help him?"**_

XXX

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Three weeks is hardly enough time to properly mourn anyone.

Once you reach the state where you're not just in the heady beginnings of love, but in the deep seated head knowledge that you love them more than you love yourself or any other human, it doesn't matter if you've known them four months or forty years. There's no going back on it.

Wilson understood that now.

Once his parents had discussed divorce; had in fact, since he was the last one left living at home due to the time constraints and rigors of pre-med, discussed it with _him. _They had not been getting along for a while. But they still loved each other.

At the time that had puzzled the hell out of him. How can you _not_ get along with someone you loved so much that twenty years had been spent together, raising three rapidly growing boys and a slowly maturing mortgage?

His mom had later explained it to him as to a child. Which he supposed, at twenty-two when it came to matters of love, he still was.

You can love someone deeply and still fight. You can disagree and hurt one another. Love does not prevent you from injuring someone. Hurting someone you love is not a sign of hatred, but of freedom. It's never pleasant but it does happen. Can and will happen.

And that freedom can only occur when you know, through and through, they won't leave you because of it. A difference of opinion, a fight, angry words, even an affair - they will stay anyway because you know deeply, so deeply, that they love you. And you love them too.

Then why the talk of divorce? he had asked.

Because you can love that deeply and still be unhappy.

Love is a ride, she had said. The highs are sky-high. The lows...are the lowest you can imagine.

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Wilson inserted the key into the lock of his dark office. It smelled of furniture polish and a fresh vacuuming. Cleaning staff probably tidied up weeks ago after he went on grievance leave to bury his wife.

She _wasn't..._that, but he had been planning on it. Not too soon, though. Not as soon as the others. Not _like _the others either. Amber had been too important. She had been too..._wonderful,_ too in love with him for him to miss the point -- and rush right to the end in quick divorce court (Justice Collingwood knew him by name) -- this time.

She had been too..._just_ what he had wanted all along.

Wilson, his dark carefully combed hair staying neatly in place from his recent hair cut, set his briefcase on his shining desk with the spanking new organizer and sat in his comfortable freshly padded chair. Soon the briefcase would be filled with files of new patients, new responsibilities and his life would go back to normal.

Pre-Amber, the love of his life normal. Not the normal he had been shooting for.

Which shot had ultimately fallen short. By about a bus length.

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When he knew it was her regular arrival time, Wilson poked his head into Cuddy's office to let her know he was in.

"You could've just phoned." She said, glancing up from her paperwork with kindness and something...he wasn't sure what it was. "I know. I just wanted to say hi." He came all the way in and stood before her desk. Cuddy looked up at him expectantly.

Wilson cleared his throat. He wanted to know but...he also didn't want to. "Um, how's House? Still here?"

Then he understood her previous enigmatic look -- disappointment. "Where else would he be?"

In his room. House's hospital room, where he still was after weeks out of the short term coma and crazy insane experiment to stimulate the buried memories of his concussion induced amnesia to see if his brain pot could be stirred enough that the memories pertinent to Amber's survival would surface.

They had. That part had worked. Amber still died. House was not a miracle worker. He could not change evolutionary chemistry or hold back the tides.

But he had sure given it a hell of a shot.

That, too, had fallen short.

"Talking yet?"

Cuddy snapped her head up and her voice was a match. "Go ask him. Find out!"

Wilson knew he deserved her contempt. In mourning or not, he had not seen nor spoken to House since he'd had to shut off Amber's life support and watch as she died in his arms. "Maybe I will." Wilson turned away.

"Wilson."

He turned back and she was behind him, in his face a bit. "Don't." She shook her head. "Don't go if it's just curiosity or conscience."

"House knows I've forgiven him. I always do, No matter-"

"Wha-? forgiven _him_-? Don't you _dare_ put this on him or trivialize what he did for you. For _you_. He risked his life twice - almost died - for _you_."

"He made Amber pick him up because he was drunk. He made her drink alcohol. She had to deliver his cane to him on the bus because he was too drunk and forgot it in the bar-"

"-Why was he at the bar?"

"-What?"

"Why do you think he was at the bar?"

"I don't know. Because he's House, because he drinks, does drugs, he-"

"-Do you want to know why I think he was at the bar getting plastered? Because for weeks he'd been trying to see you. One night. He wanted one night. Bowling. Wrestling. Bar-hopping. _Something_. Because he needed you," she pinched her fingers together like holding a seed, "this much and you kept blowing him off."

"I did not "blow him off", and how do you know any of this?"

"He told me. He tells me things. House talks to me. He thought he was losing his friend. His _only_ friend, Wilson."

"It's not my fault I'm his only friend. I'm,...I was in a relationship with a woman I loved. It was working. I was happy. House knew that, he understood."

"He was giving you plenty of space without complaint --" Cuddy held out her hands face down to stop the circular train. Red nail-polished fingers, like blood. "Look. Even if the friendship is off now, you owe him your gratitude."

"For what? -- killing my girlfriend?"

Cuddy raised a hand and slapped his face, not hard. Then she stepped back. "I'm sorry." She shook her head at herself and him. "House almost died - twice. Do you really think he risked his life trying to solve that mystery because it was for just..._anyone_?"

Wilson, cheek still stinging, never-the-less gave her a sarcastic tilt of his head.

Cuddy defered. "Okay, okay, maybe he _would_ do that. But I think he knew in his subconscious that it was Amber he was trying to save. And because Amber was important to you, she was important enough to him to do whatever it took. Important enough to almost die trying. You're punishing him for _loving_ you."

"Amber's dead because House got drunk, _again_, and she had to go to his rescue."

"Amber's dead because she was trying to get along with him for your sake." At his crumpling look, "-- I know this is painful -- but Amber's dead because she took a drink, then took a pill, then was in an accident." Cuddy let a huge ball of tension fall from her shoulders. "The first three were her decision, her fault. The last one, the one that killed her, was the bus drivers or the truck drivers fault. None of it was Houses."

Cuddy returned to her desk. "See him. Or don't. But unless you mean to thank him and tell him that you're his friend and that you care about him,...

"...please don't go at all."

XXX Part II soon. 8)

(those two episodes were too shit hot to not write a follow-up fic' of some kind)


	2. Chapter 2

Die Trying

Part II

By Geelady

Summary: Post Houses Head/Wilsons Heart. SPOILERS! Pre-slash. Hurt/comfort.

_**I realise the aphasia thing is similar to Juliabohemian's A Lesser Evil, though the cause is different and the censequences/struggle for House will be different. **_

_**The inspiration for Die Trying actually came from when House woke up with Cuddy and she said "Don't try and speak". It looked to me that he did try and couldn't.**_

_**No copy catting intended.**_

Pairings: H/C H/W.

NEW Rating: NC-17, Adult, M.

XXXXXXX

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Try as he might, Wilson's feet would not move from the hallway viewing window and walk into House's room in ICU.

Other feet had managed it no problem.

Cameron was there now, sitting beside House's bed as he slept. He was still there, Wilson learned, because Doctor Chase had detected a tachycardia arrhythmia in the beat of House's heart and an angio-scope film had detected a small portion of dead muscle. Soon Kutner would take the next shift of four hours. Cuddy insisted that House not be left alone for a moment.

Heart-damage. Plus _heart_ damage, so Cuddy was worried.

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"Three heart attacks," Chase shook his head, speaking in his soft Australian cadence, saying sadly, "in a decade will do that to a person."

Wilson had been present at all three. One by the hand of Fate. One by the hand of House. One by cardio deadly drugs on a dangerous quest for an answer.

Then there was the fourth. Not a heart attack, technically, but a serious seizure that left House's heart galloping like a two year old filly on race day. That one Wilson had ordered personally. Oh, yes, and _it_ had left House in a coma for a few days.

And now in silence.

Cuddy had taken his hand when his eyes opened and hushed him not to speak. He didn't. Not that day nor any to follow.

"Aphasia." Foreman explained to the large group of people who had all claimed at one time or another that they couldn't stand House. Cameron, Chase, the new fellowships Kutner, Taub and Hadley. And Cuddy there at center court.

Then there was himself, Wilson, best friend of House so claimed and known as, standing off to one side, having yielding place to his superior who had held House's hand for hours as he struggled to get a word out, his lips trying to form something - anything - beyond an inarticulate mumble or gasp. House, sweating in frustration, eyes wide in fear when it became obvious to him that the words were no longer there. His speech gone, his ability to effectively communicate as a diagnostic physician and teacher, had sent House into a frenzy of panic and tears.

No one knew how much of the struggling was terror and how much anger. House couldn't tell them.

When Cuddy, after a mild sedative had sufficiently calmed him, handed a sweating and teary eyed House a pad of paper and pencil, saw that he could only write single letters and those not very clearly, her resolve to be strong for him had crumpled. She gave way to tears and looked to Foreman for explanation and hope.

House turned his head and looked at the wall.

Even though House's eyes had fallen across him like a feeble beam from shore, Wilson had not moved from his far away cold sea. Shame mixed with grief and anger threatened to end him and he retreated to his car and wept.

House had looked away to the wall and not turned back again, and in that single gesture Cuddy was certain she had seen the weak light in his eyes sputter and die.

XXX

"What is your name?" Foreman asked House. Standing by his bed he, at the urgent call from Cuddy, did a preliminary analysis of House's sudden inability to speak.

House turned his head from the wall long enough to shake it _No_.

Did he mean _No, I don't know_ Cuddy wondered. _No, I can't say it._ ? Or _No, I'm not playing this fucking game!_ ?

"House." Foreman tried to be sympathetic but stern. House would mock the sympathy and laugh at Foreman-Brand stern. "We need to assess the aphasia. Think like a doctor for a minute and not a stubborn ass patient."

House relented and nodded his head. Foreman assumed House meant Go Ahead. "I'm going to ask you a series of questions. Give me one word answers if you can, and answer as many questions as you can. If you don't know the answer, shrug. If can't _say_ the answer, shake your head, but try to say it first. Okay?"

House nodded.

"I'm Doctor Foreman. Is that true?"

House struggled, his lips pursing and moving as though a word was there, just a beyond the fingertips of his mind. House shook his head.

"What is your name?"

House tried again and nothing but a sputter of air escaped. He shook his head _No_.

"How do you spell your last name?"

This time House didn't even try, instead immediately shaking his head in the negative.

Foreman tried for several more minutes. Twenty in fact, to illicit a word, a letter from his boss's muzzled speech center. All he got for answers was the subdued and mute look of fear on House's pale face. Cuddy held his hand through-out.

When Foreman was finished the test, "I'll be back later." He told House and motioned for Cuddy to follow him outside the room. Gathered in the hall in a small doctor-typical huddle, they knew House could see them discussing him through the glass. His eyes tossed out accusations of betrayal and secrets.

"This type of Aphasia." Foreman began to explain in more detail when Cuddy stopped him.

"I think we should discuss this with House's staff. They will be affected. They need to know."

Foreman and Cuddy repaired to House's conference room. Through the room's dividing glass, House's ball sat atop his desk unperturbed. His cane was there, leaning wearily against the chair.

"This type of Aphasia, in House's case damage to Broca's Area, is centered in the area of the brain that's responsible for speech production." Foreman explained to the group gathered round the table. Wilson stood apart and listened while his mind played the last disjointed few day's events over and over like a film being forever broken and repaired. Foreman was talking about House. He should listen. What he wanted was to walk away from that room, and from Plainsborough, and never return.

"House appears capable of interpreting language, Wernick's Area, but not producing it. Aphasia can be unpredictable. That also depends on the person. For example, people like Einstein, Hawking, Mozart,..their brains learned over time to work very efficiently. Less brain power doing more-"

"-Hang on." Hadley said. "Are you saying House is a kind of medical Mozart?"

Foreman nodded, curious that the question would need to be asked and irritated at the interruption. "In his own field, yes, he is." Foreman threw her a small frown that said _Shut-up and listen. _

"The brain, House's for example, becomes like a fast car with great gas mileage and a sharp guy at the wheel. Driver takes the shortest route to any destination. Less fuel used, less time wasted. Less doing more _more _efficiently. That's House's brain on a normal day." Foreman coughed. "Now, seizure comes along and fries these particular circuits, shifts those specific neural pathways around and suddenly you have a blocked intersection or a dug up stretch of highway...

Everyone listened, fascinated, as Foreman explained the inner mind workings of their unusual employer. "

"But the guy in the car; the traffic - House's brain - hasn't figured that out yet, so suddenly what we get is congestion and drivers all trying to find an alternate route out of the mess. But that doesn't happen all at once, so in the mean time - grid-lock. Traffic backs up until the travelers can learn a new way to get where they were going." Foreman sat down at the table, his speech evidently coming to and end.

"That's what's happening in House's brain." Foreman said, tying it up. "His speech center has been damaged and his brain has to learn new routes for the neural vehicles that carry words and language."

"How long until he does?" Kutner asked.

Foreman swivelled his chair, linking his hands behind his head. He'd been up all night and he was bone tired. "Every case is different because "traffic congestion"," he made little rabbit-ear quotes in the air, "can vary."

Stretching the metaphor, "Depends on how much damage there was, how much oxygen deprivation, if any. There's usually some with a seizure. House could have his speech back tomorrow, next week, next year or never. Even then, it could come back all at once or in bits and pieces. It could come back confused for a while. Turned all around." Foreman saved the worst news for last. "Or House may never speak again."

XXXX

Part III soon.

GOALS:

Dexter Chapter VIII by Sunday.

Last chapter Click, Baby, Click by Tuesday.


	3. Chapter 3

Die Trying

Part III

By Geelady

Summary: Post Houses Head/Wilsons Heart. SPOILERS! Pre-slash. Hurt/comfort.

_**I realize the aphasia thing is similar to Juliabohemian's A Lesser Evil, though the cause is different and the consequences/struggle for House will be different. **_

_**The inspiration for Die Trying actually came from when House woke up with Cuddy and she said "Don't try and speak". It looked to me that he did try and couldn't.**_

_**No copy catting intended.**_

Pairings: H/C H/W.

Rating: NC-17, Adult, M.

XXXXXXX

XXXXXXX

A door in his mind had closed on him.

House woke up and this day stayed awake. His strength had returned, most of it. Though they assured him he was not out of the woods yet. His heart for one thing was still off on it's own little erratic journey.

"Pacemaker." Chase had explained. "Your heart has suffered three infarction's or extreme stresses. Miraculously there's minimal damage but the beat is irregular. The tachycardia seems to be related to what's going on in your brain. You're still suffering Petite-mal seizures. You don't realize it because you're not aware of them, they only last seconds maybe. But the EEG confirms it."

House listened with a angry retort ready on his lips that would not obey his command to come out and cut down Chase's patronizingly soothing words.

_I'm a goddamn physician too. I know the fucking deal!_

A door had closed and no window had opened. So much for sentimental platitudes.

Chase sat and explained that House was being released in a few hours but he would need to stay with someone. Cuddy had, in fact, confiscated all his apartment keys, including Wilson's and the one he cleverly kept concealed above his door so he could not simply ignore his doctor's orders and go home.

Wilson had not stepped forward with an offer. No one had talked to him much since the funeral, and he hadn't talked much to them. Chase never actually told House that but House could put nothing and nothing together and get the answer. Wilson was not there.

House wondered if he ever would be again. Amber's head violently bunted and smashed, bodies tumbling, himself feeling his skull crack and his leg scream in the accident, all of it still spun in his mind like a horrific carousel. Bloody bodies greeted him in sleep.

But for dead, bloodless blonde Amber who lay in an ICU hospital bed wrapped in Wilson. House had kept his distance. Only trying to save her. This was Wilson. She was Wilsons. He _would_ save her.

Wilson had asked House for his life in exchange for Ambers and he had nodded in quick agreement. The alternative, for some unfathomable reason, seemed worse - that Wilson would never forgive him if he failed.

It wasn't on his shoulders; those types of decisions belonged not to him but the god Wilson sometimes alluded to. Who had evidently abandoned him.

So House wouldn't. He would succeed where god had failed and everything would be fine.

Then with shock he found himself unable to. He would fail and so he clutched at the straw Wilson had begged him to accept - Deep Brain Electrical Stimulation. The consequences to himself were, he thought, worth the risk. Not for the first time in his life, House had reached the conclusion that the risk was minimal. Not the risk to _him_, but the risk of him to Wilson.

If it worked, great. If it didn't well, House just didn't feel he would be missed all that much. Maybe he _had_ been a little depressed. He recalled drinking a lot that day.

Maybe not just that day.

"House." Cuddy entered his room and shook him from his reverie. "Come on, get dressed." She dropped some clothes on the foot of the bed for him and leaned his cane against its railing. "We're going home."

House flipped the covers back and stood on feet that felt like they hadn't been used in a while. He was pretty sure he had walked to the bathroom a few times since they removed the catheter. What had Chase said?

When was that?

Cuddy gave him privacy so he could dress then walked him to his office so he could gather up,...but when he got there, he couldn't remember what it was he wanted.

Finally, feeling foolish, he gathered up his ball and a few music CD's, nodding to Cuddy that he was ready. She made no comment, just smiled, linked her arm through his and they left the hospital together.

XXX

House soon discovered that he could write a rudimentary English and Cuddy was thrilled to see him develop on the fly a kind of Housian short-hand symbolic writing system. He wrote her questions when he wanted anything and if she asked him anything, he would write out his response if a nod or head-shake or sarcastic look proved insufficient to get his meaning across.

Over the next few days, making it up as he went along, Cuddy began to hope that House would return to his loud, obnoxious self sooner than expected, that the aphasia was just a temporary brain fart and no real damage had been done.

On that line of reasoning, House was far more practical than she.

At the dinner table (Cuddy had actually catered in about a week's worth of gourmet frozen dinners from a local restaurant. She had no time to cook and wanted to avoid falling into some little woman domestic role like this living arrangement was somehow permanent), House, always keeping his pen and pad within reach, wrote: _Ths not wrk 4 wrk. Diff-als ned comm_.

Cuddy read it and shook her head. "You're wrong. They need your skill and expertise, not your mouth."

House wrote painstakingly. His hand wanted to fly across the page but his brain refused to grant him the speed or verbiage required. It was only willing to dole out the needed written language in tiny bites. _2 Slw. Patnt cud dy._

Cuddy knew they could toss this ball back and forth until it deflated and she would be no closer to convincing House that, once he had his pace-maker inserted and was well into recovery, he would need to return to work despite his added disability. "Don't tell me you're afraid."

House slammed his hand down on the table and opened his mouth to yell. But of course, nothing came out but some erratic and angry gasps. He closed his mouth and grabbed his cane, limping into the living room, his food untouched.

Cuddy was angry at herself. Looks like her tactic had misfired.

Plus House needed to eat and now he was skipping out on another meal. House had lost significant weight since all of this terrible mess had started. Since he had stepped into a city bus and his life had changed for the worse. Maybe forever.

Again.

Cuddy sighed. Maybe it was too soon to push him.

She followed him into the living room. House had sat down on her couch and was rubbing his eyes with one hand. To Cuddy he gave the appearance of a man who had fallen into an instant and very black depression. At least for tonight, House was likely not moving from her couch.

Cuddy was about to speak again when her doorbell rang. She decided not to ignore it and walked around the corner.

It was Chase. House could hear their hushed voices and suddenly felt furious that he was being kept in the dark about his own problems. But he did not move.

The door closed and Cuddy returned to the living room to speak to him. "That was Chase. He says you're booked for surgery two days from now. Seven AM."

House continued to rub his eyes and forehead slowly, methodically. Like he was stuck in a loop. Finally he stopped and looked up at Cuddy.

Cuddy realised that House had not heard anything she had just said. No. It wasn't that. By the big question on his face, he was in ignorance of her having said anything to him at all. Cuddy caught her breath. It was the first time she had been exposed to it but, her stomach filling with sick butterflies, she realized that House had just experienced a seizure and so her words had been erased from his mind. "Absence" seizures was another name for what was happening to him.

Absence of mind. _The state of being away_.

Her heart thudded like a base drum. It was unfathomable to her to see House blink out from the world like that. Though he had been hallucinating since the crash and experiencing nightmares, he had also been sick when those were occurring. Not this. This was House almost all better but losing seconds or minutes of his memory. His mind dropping the ball and not even saying _whoops, sorry 'bout that_.

Short term memory. Random words, pictures, connections, things that made up everyone's day of work and home, were being deleted without rhyme or excuse. It was a state so out of keeping with House's amazing brain power and knack for learning that she felt she was watching someone die in micro-bursts.

The death of a soul and its purpose in the world. It was so _fucking unfair!_

So maybe House, without even knowing all the reasons why, was right? Maybe this wasn't going to work. Maybe House was really, finally, too disabled to do his job.

She swallowed her speculations and doubts and addressed him again as though she had not spoken at all. "Chase says you're scheduled for surgery day after tomorrow at seven AM."

House nodded. Without knowing he had just lost a few seconds of his day, House sat back and turned her television on by remote.

Still he looked, a picture came to her mind of a blinding light in the night and a deer frozen in place on the highway. The car was speeding toward it and still it did not move aside. A deer understands nothing of metal and glass, mass or velocity - or the knowledge it is about to be struck down.

Cuddy would help him move out of the way.

House sat and stared at the light.

XXX

Part IV soon!!


	4. Chapter 4

Die Trying

Part IV

By Geelady

Summary: Post Houses Head/Wilsons Heart. SPOILERS! Pre-slash. Hurt/comfort.

Pairings: H/C H/W.

Rating: NC-17, Adult, M.

XXXXXXX

XXXXXXX

"Doctor Wilson!"

Wilson, out of his black funeral suite and back in grey doctor suit and white doctor coat turned to see Doctor Chase sprinting to catch up with him outside his office.

It was early, just passed eight AM. Chase had to be on a morning rotation to be here that early and already wearing scrubs.

"Foreman needs you to sign off on some treatment for House."

Wilson remembered with horror that he was still House's medical proxy. An awkward situation, given their current cool status. "What's the treatment?"

"Ethosuximide Solution for the absence seizures."

"He still hasn't said a word?"

"No, but he's able to write a bit. Kind of a short-hand that gets garbled sometimes."

"How so?" Wilson was curious. Even though he knew people thought he was acting like an ungrateful ass, he was still concerned over House's well being.

"He remembers that "K" has a hard sound, so he reads the word kick and knows it starts with k - he seems able to hear the words in his head - but cake starts with a hard sound also, and his brain gets confused. He'll write a hard "C" as "K". And because the "E" is silent, he'll omit it. So "Kick" usually stays "Kick" but "cake" becomes "Kak". We're consulting with an Aphasia Specialist. She's made a study on the weird "languages" that sometimes come out of stroke and seizure victims."

"So other than the seizures House is completely lucid? Then you don't need my signature."

"It's easier if you sign the form. Otherwise we have to drive to Cuddy's house, explain it all to House and then he might refuse. This way he gets the damn med's for his brain damage without causing any trouble. Legally you can sign off on this. And it would _help_." Chase's tone underlined the last word.

Wilson didn't point out that just signing the form wouldn't make House actually take the medicine. Chase probably had already thought of that and had no doubt taken Cuddy into his confidence so she could force House to do so.

In the end, Cuddy usually got House to do what she wanted.

Wilson accepted the clip-board and added his signature scrawl at the bottom. He would have to see Cuddy about changing his proxy status. Maybe she would be willing?

Wilson felt sick at the words "brain damage" and House. The two togther felt contrary to the natural order of the universe. Like losing Amber had felt. Unnatural. Unacceptable.

XXX

"I'm prescribing Ethosuximide Solution. The side effects are no worse than Clonazepam or Valproic Acid but with less risk to the liver or kidneys." Foreman told Cuddy over the phone. "I'm sending Chase over with the pills. Make sure House doesn't drink any alcohol and don't let him drive."

Cuddy nodded, then remembered she was on the phone. "I already took his keys and poured everything down the drain, including an expensive bottle of wine from my little sister's wedding day." But if it helped House...

Cuddy bit her lip. It was six thirty AM on a Wednesday. Normally she would be running a hospital, not watching over one of her sick doctors. But House wasn't just any doctor, he was a friend.

Foreman brought her up to date on the Fellowships and their current case, which they seemed to have well in hand, told her good luck and hung up.

Cuddy wished desperately that Foreman had asked to directly inform House about his current case, then realized if House had wanted to add or change treatment...better for now that Foreman just tell her. She would let House know the details.

XXX

House had been on the Ethosuximide Solution for two weeks but it was too soon to tell if it was having any effect. Cuddy thought she had noticed fewer absence seizures that week. Maybe. Though he was temporarily staying with her, she still wasn't around House enough to see an improvement, if any.

Cuddy made coffee and heard House stirring in her guest bedroom. His cane softly thumping a regular beat back and forth behind the wall told her he was in extra pain that morning. Already she had come to recognize the patterns of his morning ritual. If the pain was manageable, he'd limp into the kitchen, nod good morning, dry pop a Vicodin and pour a coffee.

If it was bad day, like today, he thump around his bedroom for twenty minutes until the leg nerve either quit cramping or went numb (usually after an agonizing hour of cramping), then he limp heavily into her living room in his pajamas, sit in her easy chair, prop his leg up on her ottoman and nod thanks when she brought him a coffee.

Today Cuddy brought him a coffee and sat opposite him on her heavily padded couch. Sometimes she chatted. Little useless things about work, things which she knew he had no patience for, but made her feel like she was doing something; engaging his mind; distracting herself from his barely perceptible blank moments. Those moments left her terrified for him. Cuddy wanted to be wonder woman and reverse the clock, wind everything back to that point in time when House and she had spoken some months after Wilson had hooked up with Amber.

So clear in her mind was his face. So sharp in memory his carefully even tone as he mentioned in passing that Wilson was "busy again" and had canceled their buddy night for the third time in a row. His face had appeared unmoved by his own words but from the depth of her history with Gregory House, she understood that cool, even words and no expression meant hurt and disappointment.

She had almost spoken to Wilson about it then. Almost. But changed her mind. Wilson was in love. Soon he would find a balance between his new love and his old one. For that is what House was. A long time friend. Side by side soldiers in the ranks of medicine, moving through the fields of the injured together, learning, growing, curing and caring for each other. A melodramatic image but everything about them seemed that way.

Cuddy was certain that Wilson loved House. He had been willing to go to jail for him, hadn't he? Wilson had spent years worrying about House's increasing dependance on a narcotic to cope with his pain and soon after that, had come to her expressing concern that House was beginning to show all the hallmarks of alcoholism.

Yet even then Wilson had done his best to stand by him, right?

Cuddy recalled, though, some of the underlying manipulations by both she and Wilson during the time of Volger and Tritter. Difficult times where House stood on principle to a fault. Both times, to the near ending of his own career. Funny how looking back, you see things you'd been blind to at the time. Like when she insisted House wear the doctor's coat because Volger wanted him to. She hadn't even considered asking House to explain why he wouldn't, beyond his innate stubbornness that is.

House did not want to be stared at. He did not want to become the poor, crippled doctor in the eyes of his patients. He knew, and correctly so, that people would question his judgement if he appeared sick to them. And House did so often appear sick. Pain sick. The kind of pain that chips away resolve so by the end of the day has weighted you down like a ball and chain.

Standing on principle, House had blown Volger's big lecture. Perceived as such a foolish act at the time yet, to Cuddy, now so simple. It may not have been the wise thing to do but it had been the _right_ thing to do. She couldn't damn House for his integrity.

Getting rid of Volger had cost the hospital big. Yet still, it had proved the right thing to do and in the long run Cuddy did not regret it. Had Volger and his money stayed he would have turned Plainsborough teaching hospital into his own perpetual drug trial. Testing out his for-profit pharmaceuticals instead of worrying about actually serving and helping the patients.

House wanted to cure people. House, in his sometimes insane, blows-up-in-his-face way, was a man of principle. Subjectively perhaps, but then what isn't?

Even though it had caused problems between them over the years, Wilson used to admire that about House.

What had changed?

They were two friends who loved one another even if neither (as far as she understood) had ever said so. For a friendship between two men, it was unique. Unusually open and close. The most personal she had ever witnessed. So personal that it needn't be discussed or debated why. It just was.

But events had rolled through time and had brought them to this awful moment, where Amber was dead, Wilson wallowed in abject grief and physically traumatized House lay mute and in fear for his professional future - even his life.

So now, most mornings Cuddy went to the hospital for a while, tended to urgent matters her assistant couldn't deal with alone, then brought home lunch for herself and House. Some days she would go back for the afternoon, sometimes not. Many times, as she drove away from her house, she feared what she might find when she returned; would he be better or worse? Had another even worse seizure taken his mind? Had a failing heart taken his life?

Lately, Cuddy carried a knot of fear in her stomach twenty-four-seven.

At the end of his first two weeks on the Ethosuximide, it was decided that House would do well on a heart regulating drug rather than go through the trauma of another surgery so soon after his concussion and seizure. Besides, what if he had another severe seizure while his heart was under the knife? Inserting a pace-maker, it was decided, was too risky at this point.

This particular morning, Cuddy left House drinking his coffee at the trill of her phone.

Her tone short, "Yes?" Six thirty AM, even for a hospital Administrator, was a little early for a phone call. Cruel to her sleepy eyes and disheveled hair that inside of seven hours always transformed itself from carefully combed coiffe to wild mop. So her usual cheerful morning hello had been dropped for the less cheerful greeting.

It was her assistant. Cuddy listened while he ran over her itinerary for the day. Cuddy, adept at juggling her home and professional life, often in both hands while chewing morning toast, walked to her kitchen to grab her note-pad.

House had beaten her there, pouring a second cup of coffee. She threw him another quick morning smile. He'd made himself toast also.

Grateful that her efficient assistant had called, she was reminded of the two necessary stops before actually arriving at the hospital to begin her day. After three previous temp agency assistants (and one woefully incompetent receptionist/typist), had given up and ran from her hectic office and House's whirlwind presence, Cuddy had landed the perfect office miracle.

A young male secretary who took the insanity of her schedule and House's personal insanity in stride. The fellow hardly batted an eyelash when House came barging in, the astute young man quickly learning not protest, not even to pause in his typing and just let House roll right through the door like an unstoppable mass.

"Thanks Barry." Cuddy said into the phone. She must remember to give him a nice raise next time evaluations were due.

From the small round table, House watched his boss with some amusement as Cuddy darted back and forth in her kitchen, gathering papers, and readying herself for the daily work load. Then he turned his attention to the morning paper he had absconded from her front porch and put his mind to work.

He could read and understand all the black and white marks laying flat on the page. He just couldn't remember how to make his lips and tongue form the letters into words and say them. Yet he could hear them in his head as clear as ever.

House was grateful for the attention Cuddy had insisted on bestowing on him these last few weeks, but he was also tired of hanging around her house all day while his fate unfolded before him free of any direction or purpose. He felt well enough to return to work but wasn't sure how he was to accomplish that. Being a doctor required open, and sometimes loud and forceful, communication with patients and colleagues. Presently he had no spoken language and his writing skills reflected all the skill of a fourth grader on crack.

Something bounced off his head and he looked up ready with a zingy retort - if only he could make his lips say it.

Cuddy had bounced a ball of crumpled paper off his noggin to get his attention while she moved her little sticky-notes on her wall organizer from a To Do list to the Done list.

House watched her, fascinated with her little world of notes, paper and morning bustle. She turned on the tiny televison she had perched on her kitchen counter to Kidsland Channel. She knew House liked Sponge Bob and a few other kiddie cartoons and had recently given up her customary morning news channel just for him.

House also didn't mind looking at her baggy bath robe or disheveled crown of dark hair. That "just got out of bed look" suited her very well.

And he had come to appreciate her daily goodbye hug. That was his favorite part of being Cuddy's house guest. The physical contact, genuine affection and concern from another human being to him (not impersonal orgasms paid for by the hour), so rare in his life now, had helped lift his depression.

House smiled a little as she made good on her routine, bent over him from behind and squeezed him goodbye. "Have a nice day, House." before rushing off to shower, dress and scurry away.

House hugged her arm before she released him. Cuddy smelled nice in the mornings. This morning she added a kiss on his cheek. She seemed to enjoy spoiling him.

Even better.

Before leaving the kitchen, Cuddy grabbed an apple and tossed it to him. "Eat an apple. You know what they say..." She smiled and left the room.

House caught it easily in his hand. A shiny skinned Japanese import. It felt good in his grasp. He could just get his fingers around it, until they were almost touching, just like he could almost get his mind around speaking the words so necess-

-House stared at the apple. Looked over at Cuddy's note board. Glanced down at the newspaper print, the words that made so much sense.

Opened his mouth to find still a frustrating lack of words, which made no sense what-so-ever.

Somewhere to his right, the Sesame Street jingle started and kids sang about sunny days and Grover introduced the letters of the day and "the number 4!"

House's mind, intact as ever but for the not speaking part, sifted through the kitchen's sights and sounds, the color of the red, red apple and the silly kid songs on the TV screen.

It gave House an idea. It took form and weight and fell into place like coins in a change machine, dropping into their assigned slots. A treatment for his situation had appeared.

All in all, it ought to work.

House took a shower, got dressed and via the Internet link, ordered up a taxi ride.

He wondered where the nearest arts and crafts store might be.

XXX

House had made it clear he disliked Amber. Wilson couldn't get his head around the reasons why. Other than she seemed to be a female version of House (according to House and if so why would he hate a proxy of himself?), who monopolized his time.

Wilson was sure that had been one of the reasons. House's in-born self-centeredness explained a lot. Bargaining with Cuddy on his own behalf for Wilson's time. Calling Amber Cut-Throat-Bitch in public, in front of _Wilson_, even though House knew her name. Firing her even though she could out-think the other hire-ee's on her worse day because she failed to follow House's game rules.

Everything was a game to House.

Amber had been everything to Wilson. His relationship with her had been the first really healthy feeling in his life. Three unhappy marriages. And then Amber, where he had felt truly happy almost all of the time. House had bitched at him for years to "break the pattern" and when he finally did, the man had done everything in his power to end it. Including bribery.

How selfish really could House be? Enough to call Wilson instead of a cab to haul his drunk ass home? To maneuver her - someone he hated - into having a drink with _him?_ _Why? _How really hard had House tried to save Amber on the bus that night?

If he hated her that much why agree to the DEBS?

Such questions had ricocheted around Wilson's skull for weeks. He was sorry House was ill, that the DEBS had hurt him. Not that Wilson had wished it on House, but it was almost Karma.

Wilson felt like the victim of a disaster. Events had rushed in, cut to pieces and washed away his short-lived happiness.

Only one thing left to do so he could begin again. Start anew down a different road.

Wilson entered House's dark office. None of House's team had arrived. House himself would not be in.

Wilson turned on the small drafting lamp on House's desk. He felt like a thief though he was not stealing but leaving something behind. Still, he was an invader in what had become a strange land. He half expected House to limp in on his cane and sing-song a "Good morning Jimmy" as though nothing had happened to Amber at all.

Wilson fished his keys out of his pocket and removed House's apartment key from the ring, laying it on the middle of the empty desk. His fingers let it go slowly. It made no sound.

The door behind him did make a sound when it opened and Wilson turned to see House standing in the doorway leaning on his cane with his back-pack over his right shoulder and carrying a heavy box in the crook of his left arm.

At any other time in the past, Wilson would have automatically reached out and taken the box from House - helped him carry his burdens.

House looked at Wilson then dropped his eyes to floor to navigate to the desk, balancing his heavy load. He allowed the box to drop to the floor with a thud and let his backpack slip from his shoulder onto the desk. House looked at Wilson like he wanted to say something, though they both knew he couldn't, when his eye fell on the key.

Wilson held his breath, wondering if House would scoop it up and throw it at him. But all House did was look Wilson in the eye with obvious hurt.

Wilson felt a small pang of regret, but overwhelming grief had held sway for weeks and he was reluctant to let that feeling go. If he did, he might start to forget her.

House didn't touch the key. He sat in his chair and waited. Wilson understood House was waiting for him to either talk or leave.

"A few weeks before...her death, Amber told me that you tried to bribe her to break up with me, and I've been trying to understand why." Wilson dug his sweaty hands into his pockets. House kept his eyes trained on his back-pack, one finger idly playing with a strap.

"Why try to break up the first good thing I've ever had in my life? You hated all three of my wives because they were not good for me. But I've come to understand you actually hated them, and Amber it seems, because they were not good for _you._

"You went out of your way to screw with her." Wilson turned half around. "I appreciate that you tried to save her for me, House and I'm sorry it has left you disabled. Though I can't help but wonder that maybe you're just a little bit glad she's dead?"

When he saw the reaction in House's eyes, Wilson almost regretted the rhetorical question. It had needed to be said but it had gone deep.

Still, House had to be told how deeply Wilson had cherished Amber and how terribly it had affected him when she died. House had to understand that it had hurt _Wilson._ That House's treatment of her had hurt _him_.

"Bye House."

XXX

Doctor Hadley entered her boss's conference room in the semi-dark. It was not quite seven in the morning and forty minutes earlier she had received a text message from she assumed Doctor Foreman to report in early. She hung her coat and searched through the upper cupboard above the sink looking for coffee makings. Whoever arrived first made coffee. One of House's rules. One about which he was adamant.

Fine with her. Hadley often arrived early. She enjoyed the few minutes of quiet with her thoughts before the other team members arrived to begin their chatter. Especially Kutner who almost never shut up.

The only one who broke the rule was House. If he arrived first he made himself a cup of instant. So in that event (a rarity unless an really "cool" case crossed his desk) whoever arrived second made the real stuff.

Hadley measured out the grounds and poured in the tap water. Filtered water would be so much better but House forbade the use of his bottled water. He drank so much of it. Hadley suspected he was doing his best to flush something clean through his liver and kidneys since he funneled so much that was _un_-clean through them on a daily basis, like Vicodin and alcohol.

Though it was none of her business, she suspected House was a closet drunk. Thinking of him made Hadley habitually glance in the direction of his office.

Someone was there. A tiny shaft of white light shone through the vertical blinds to the grey carpet.

Couldn't be House, he was still recuperating, wasn't he?

Whatever her personal feelings for House, he was her boss, teacher and a first class physician. She was offended that someone would possess the hubris to commandeer or snoop in House's office in his absence.

Professionally it was crass and presumptuous.

Hadley didn't knock when she entered his office, ready to demand of whoever the hell it was what the hell they were doing, but stopped short when she saw that it was House.

At her entry House had turned his chair away and slipped a small metal object into his desk drawer. Taking a tissue from the same drawer, he rubbed at his eyes and blew his nose. Turning around he, with a thumb and forefinger, indicated by a couple of small motions by his nose that he had a cold. House sniffed loudly as though confirming it.

Hadley was glad to see him back at work so soon and said so but questioned whether maybe he ought not to be if he was ill?

House dismissed her concern with a wave of his hand.

Hadley nodded, mumbled something about coffee and left him to his privacy.

She wasn't positive of course but still fairly certain that House did not have a cold.

Pouring him a cup of the real stuff, Hadley was quite certain in fact, from his bloodshot eyes and carefully guarded demeanor, that Doctor House had been crying.

XXX

Part V ASAP!


	5. Chapter 5

Die Trying

Part V

By Geelady

Summary: Post Houses Head/Wilsons Heart. SPOILERS! Pre-slash. Hurt/comfort. Some HUDDY in this and next chapter.

Pairings: H/C H/W.

Rating: NC-17, Adult, M.

XXXXXXX

XXXXXXX

House sat at his desk and spun in his swivel chair.

Eyes dry now. "Cold" gone.

The spinning was probably not good for his healing skull but it felt good to sit there again. Twirling in his chair made him feel free. It was like home if home were an office. This place was_ his_. As long as he could effectively teach, diagnose and heal people.

He felt almost himself again. Not quite but who's noticing? Certainly not the fellowships, they had been too scared to mention anything about him, for example, not being able to speak. But there were tricks to talking.

Like you can do it with your mouth open _or_ closed. And that was why the trip to the arts and crafts store and why he was waiting for Kutner, Taub and Foreman to show up.

Wait until they see the kiddie scissors.

House spun in his chair and every so often glanced through the glass to Hadley who sipped her coffee with no idea how she would be spending most of her day, barring any new cases. Their most recent case had turned out to be a rare, but not impossible to diagnose, blood disorder, and the fellowships had solved it without him.

House saw Taub enter, followed by Kutner. But no Foreman yet. He never was one for being early.

House took up his mystery box of trinkets and entered the conference room.

Taub, Kutner and Hadley all nodded to him. Just because he couldn't, they were reluctant to use their voices. House smiled at that. People were so predictable.

house upended the box onto the table and spread out the contents.

The three junior doctors stared at the jumble of what looked like elementary school supplies. Squares of felt and Magic Markers of every color of the rainbow, cardboard letters and numbers, several pairs of child-safe scissors, rolls of self adhesive Velcro, even what appeared to be doll parts; tiny cotton-stuffed pink hands, legs, heads, plastic eyes, noses, lips, ears, feet, torso's - even a set of Farmer-Joe doll clothes.

House also had ready three paper notes with instructions. He handed one to each of them, who, in turn, read them aloud for all present.

Hadley: "I'm to round up two felt notice boards and another white board." She looked at House. "From where?"

House pointed to the door then spread his hands wide, clearly indicating _From anywhere!_

Taub read his: "I'm to buy _or steal" _Taub glanced at House with low-key exasperation,"four different types of bells or whistles: A slide whistle, a Zinger, a.." He squinted his eyes,..."a Maracca??." He looked at House incredulously, "and a bicycle horn." He looked up at House, "Why?-"

-House interrupted him by pointing at Kutner. House gave Taub an expression of indignation. _Don't interrupt - it's Kutner's turn! _

Kutner, rather enjoying House's little game, read his with far more curiosity than had the other two_. _"I'm suppose to go get sandwiches and donuts for everybody."

Kutner looked at the others, "Looks like I win."

XXX

"Where's House?" Cuddy demanded of Foreman whom she caught in his way into Plainsborough. It was passed eleven in the morning and she guessed a tardy Foreman would have the scoop on where her wayward house guest might have gotten to.

Foreman raised a curious eyebrow. "Did he run away from home?"

Cuddy was not in the mood. "I was just checking up on him earlier than usual because I have a board meeting in an hour that's likely to last the rest of the afternoon."

"Checked his office? I haven't been there. I'm scheduled for a turn in the clinic."

Cuddy had considered it but she though even House would know enough to rest until he was well enou- on second thought, she decided -- no he wouldn't know well enough. He would ignore the danger to his health and try and work. She had never known anyone who spent so many working hours trying to get out of work only to risk life and limb to come back to it.

Cuddy detoured to her office to dump her briefcase and deal with any messages. If House was in his office, he was safe enough for now. What trouble could the man get into when he couldn't even talk enough to insult anyone, like a cop or a judge?

XXX

While his minions were busy gathering his requested items, House wandered down to Emergency and from an out of the way corner, watched Cameron - who threw him a brief smile - tend to her very busy department. He was proud of what she had made of herself at Plainsborough, though he knew she missed the hard cases and the challenge they brought. But she seemed to fit in well where she was and appeared to enjoy her work. Besides, it was a boon to have a friend in Emergency from whom he could con the more bafflingly sick patients.

After a few minutes of lurking, when everything had settled down a little, House sought Cameron out. He found her by a patient with a broken arm and contusions to his face.

"MVA." She said to House.

With a roll of his eyes, _Boring._ House's face said back. With a sweep of his cane around the occupied beds, Cameron picked up on why he was there. It was the only reason he ever came to Emergency.

Anticipating his need, Cameron already had a patient in mind. "Girl over there. Bed four. Presented with fever and swelling in her extremities. No apparent cold or flu. No reported allergies. No wounds or blood loss. No sunstroke because she doesn't want to get skin cancer like her mother. Been to four doctors and three emergency rooms, including this one. No diagnosis, no change..." Cameron let House chew on that. It ought to be enough.

Indeed it was, House put out his hand for the woman's chart and Cameron handed it to him. She smiled at the small flicker of excitement in his eyes. A person less familiar with the man would have missed it. "Have fun." She said.

XXX

Before Cuddy even thought to look at the clock, two hours had gone by and her board meeting was moments away. Foreman entered her office, a stethoscope hanging around his neck from his turn in the clinic, a look on his face Cuddy was hard put to place. After a few seconds she decided he was - _floored._

"Wh-a-a-t?" Cuddy drew out the question with a small twinge of fear in her gut. That expression had to be referring to- "What did _House_ do?"

Foreman shook his head with grudging respect. "I don't like to be wrong. And I'm not wrong that often. But this time, I'm _glad_ I'm wrong."

"What are you talking about? What's House done?"

"You won't believe it."

"Wanna bet? Spill it."

Foreman actually smiled, just a few teeth showing, like he was eight years old and just heard the circus might be coming to town. "It's easier if you just come see."

XXX

Foreman made it to House's office before Cuddy and stood back to let her enter, which she did fully expecting to find House either high as a kite, lying on the floor in some new world of injury or pain, or being arrested again and Tritter standing there smiling like the devil incarnate.

But what she saw was none of those things.

House was standing in between two white and two felt notice boards. On the table in front of him were small piles of what appeared to be felt letters and numbers, pictures and small (nothing larger than about four inches square), somewhere in the ball-park of correct, representations of human anatomy.

On the white board were a few symbols the fellowships, by their questions and suggested ideas, understood, but to her looked like Martian short-hand. Beside the white board with its alien language stood the felt boards with little stuffed dolls feet, what were clearly crude veins, fat cells and miscellaneous body parts all cut from colored felt and all of it stuck to the felt boards with velcro.

Tied around House's neck on four strings he wore four noise makers.

At Cuddy's confused and astonished face, Foreman said. "I'm the bike horn - because I'm dull."

He explained House's reasoning that House had previously made clear to his team members. "Kutner's the Zinger. Taub's the Maracca in reference to his Jewish slash Gypsy heritage,.."

"-Except I have no Gypsy in me at all." An annoyed Taub interjected,

"...and Hadley is the slide whistle because she "does it at both ends"."

"Wow is _that_ joke never going to get old." Hadley remarked, her voice soaking with sarcasm.

"So the whistles are for...?" Cuddy asked anyone on the room.

"Instead of our names." Kutner explained. "'Cause he can't say them."

Foreman rolled his eyes at House's typical crude and insufferable humor where they were concerned. "House had them putting this stuff together all morning. It's a kind of Sesame Street method for getting his ideas across."

Cuddy's mouth hung open. Foreman laughed a bit. He found it all highly entertaining. "You got to hand it to him, Doctor Cuddy," He said quietly just to her, "No one could have predicted this."

The door swung open and Cameron entered the room. Which meant the rumor mill was in full spin and word that House was back at his job and _how_ he was back was spreading like a grass fire in a high wind.

House finally dropped his black marker long enough to notice he and his team had attracted an audience. His face only said _What are you staring at? Can't you see I'm busy??_

Cuddy approached House, carefully keeping her face free of any smile of approval or frown of irritation, either which would embarrass him. This was his moment. Well deserved. Thoroughly earned in every way and so she would not take one bit of it away from him.

So delighted was she to see him standing there, looking almost well, near to normal, just like nothing had happened...it was by far the best feeling she had experienced in a long time. It was wonderful. And to achieve this, to attempt this innovative, unheard of, genius for its simplicity maneuver, he was wonderful too.

At her approach, House wrote on the white board with his black marker: "Wz (an arrow pointing up) ?"

Cuddy got it. "What's up?" She repeated, and smiled at his childish but very effective method of communication. _My opinion of your tenacity, Mister!_

Cuddy shrugged. "Nothing." She said pleasantly. "Please continue."

It was a while before all spectators left the room to return to their own less entertaining duties.

XXX

Cuddy stuck her nose into Wilson's office. "Just thought you'd like to know." It was probable that he had been left out of the rumor loop, she thought. "House is back at work. And you missed a hell of a show."

Cuddy let his door swing shut after her, leaving Wilson to puzzle over her cryptic remark.

She had no ill will toward Wilson, he had been through a rough time. But if he was ever to repair the damage he had done to his friendship with House, there was no point in hiding House's activities from him or soft stepping the point. Maybe Wilson would see that House was quite capable of moving on in life without him. That might even be good for Wilson who had so often presumed himself to be House's conscience and savior.

House needed no savior. He was whole in and of himself.

It was time Wilson figured that out.

XXX

With intense concentration House wrote: _pte dnnr?_

Cuddy, her dark hair falling loosely over white shoulders that were holding up a soft green cotton dress with spaghetti straps, leaned across to read what House had written on his ever present note pad. "P-T-E? Pity? No this is not a pity dinner. This is me taking you out."

He nodded but wrote_ Y_.

Cuddy looked over the squat blue vase with the white daisies that the manager had provided for every table to House who had dressed in casual brown pants, a blue shirt (the one she liked Cuddy had not failed to notice) and a simply cut tan jacket. He appeared unconvinced.

"Because I'm delighted to see you back at your job and I wanted to do something nice. So I'm sorry, I know you're allergic to nice." She said half-jokingly. But she considered it herself in more depth. Yes, why? And she knew the answer.

When she had seen House lying on the bed in that coma, still like death, she had considered the very real possibility he might remain in a vegetative state for the rest of his life. And all for what he had willingly done for Amber and Wilson. The idea that House would be willing to risk his life in an attempt to help his friend and die suddenly became a possibility intolerable to her. In those hours, waiting for House to awake from the coma, a niggling that had been stirring in the back of her mind found it's movement and voice.

She cared deeply about this man. Deny it as she might, he was terribly important to her. Beyond boss, beyond friend, beyond valued colleague. House meant something. He wasn't just there in her work day, or even just there in the perimeter of her life, he was in her heart. An indelible man. Like an ink mark that time had washed permanent.

Cuddy wanted House alive and in her life.

So when he did finally open his eyes and try to speak she had hushed him gently and held his limp hand in her determined one. She would be there in his life, whatever it proved to be, in any way he needed. She wasn't going anywhere. Ever.

"I didn't think I could handle you not waking up." Cuddy said with clean honesty. "So I said to myself, when he does, I'm going to take him out for Snitzles."

Cuddy spread her napkin on her lap as the waiter brought the German fare. "This is my promise to myself I'm keeping."

Part of the promise had been she would help him work anywhere in her hospital anywhere he was able until the day he retired. House would not be abandoned again. The best news was House, as far as they new, had not suffered any more absence seizures for a week at least. The med's were working and Foreman had confirmed it as a very hopeful sign; that perhaps there was no permanent brain damage. House might indeed get his full faculties back.

House wrote: _0 mr rmntk thn snzlz._

Cuddy saw the endearingly tiny smile of shy gratitude on his face, then that face turn sober again. House wrote: _W - htz mee_

"No he doesn't. He's ...confused. I think he has his full share of grief right now." Cuddy excused Wilson in word but silently chastised him for abandoning his friend. Yes, Wilson was hurting, but there was hurting and then there was feeling sorry for yourself.

House wrote: _Kdnt sv r._

"Everyone knows that. No one could have saved Amber. Wilson knows it too. He'll come around. He doesn't hate you, he just...hates what's happened."

House seemed to relax a little at that.

At least he's trying to believe it.

"House. Forget about Wilson. I'm glad we have this time together. I've missed being your friend instead of just your boss."

House smiled wider at that, almost a full set of teeth and Cuddy caught her breath. It lit up his features, the lines and tiredness raining away like someone had stolen by and snatched the mask of sorrow from his face, revealing the fresher, more joyful man beneath. Cuddy was so taken with how handsome it looked on him, how suited, her heart fluttered. House looked amazing.

House was alive and, for all his faults and frustrating ways, a person worth having.

Wilson was a fool.

Cuddy felt a fool for not having taken a chance on House long ago.

She had an idea. "Let's order a scandalous amount of German beer."

-

-

-

-

"This was fun." Cuddy said to House at his door after insisting on paying the cab fare. "This was my invite out to _you."_ She reminded him.

House had moved home again and how empty her house had felt without him.

He nodded with thanks and slipped his key into the lock.

Suddenly Cuddy felt a wave of loneliness and longing sweep over her like a storm. She did not want to say goodbye yet. She didn't want just a polite smile of thanks and to see him disappear behind a closed door. She did not want this kind of ending on the night.

So she stepped forward and took his head between her hands and kissed him deeply, making her intent very clear. He didn't pull away and he didn't kiss back, yet. He just stared down at her in genuine surprise.

So she kissed him again, deeper, in open mouthed language, so he could physically read it and understand perfectly what it was she was asking. Exactly what it was she wanted from him that night. And what she was offering.

"I guess this wasn't just a friendly dinner after all." She said, finally admitting it to him and herself.

House, a shy but hungry look in his eye, smiled softly. Surprise and delight and nervousness all rolled across his features as Cuddy tenderly touched his hair.

House bent his head and kissed back, enveloping her in his arms and gently pulling her into his apartment.

Cuddy firmly shut the door.

XXX

Cuddy had invited him to dinner with every intent of keeping him for the entire night.

If she wasn't so heady with desire, she would be questioning her professional judgement.

Plenty of time for regrets - if indeed any surfaced - later.

By silent mutual agreement, they skipped the traditional fire side wine and Cuddy lead House by the hand to his bedroom.

Even at the last moment, his body naked and aroused beneath her, House asked with his eyes once more if she was sure. Cuddy ignored all protests from without and within and answered by lowering herself onto his waiting hardness until she was full of him.

A low moan escaped her lips and she began to rock. For the second time in her life she was stuffed with Greg House. It meant so much more this time. He meant so much more.

Cuddy rocked up and down on his cock and kissed him, and he kissed back, both exploring the long forgotten tastes and sensations of the other. His hands never stopped moving on her sides, shoulders and buttocks. Eyes half closed with need, lungs pumping, he cupped her breasts in his hands and encouraged more urgent movements from her.

Cuddy, concern over his recent injuries over ruled by her ache to please him and desire for own reward via his sweet cock, was quick to comply and moved her pelvis in tiny circles. Then back she went to rocking, raising herself up on his shaft and back down again, squeezing her pelvic muscles to spark little noises of pleasure from him. She rocked harder and faster, bringing him to the brink and then backing off. She wanted this to last.

Soon, he was nearing his limit and helpless with the need to come. Cuddy quickened her movements, this time not slowing down, but squeezing him and pulling his cock back and forth until he moaned and bucked, grabbing her buttocks, frantically trying to prolong his orgasm.

His arms dropped to his sides, limp as his own spasm diminished as Cuddy came seconds later on the last of his hardness, pelvis jerking back and forth, mind gone some place else yet still determined to somehow milk every last drop from him.

House went soft inside her but she didn't move. Not yet. Instead she bent down and kissed him hard on the mouth. "Now that was better than Snitzles."

House screwed up his eyes and pursed his lips as though thinking about the pro's and con's of her screw job before giving his verdict.

Cuddy hit him with a pillow.

During their subsequent love making, Cuddy came to learn things about Gregory House she had forgotten as well. Like this argumentative, stubborn, impossible to control, body and soul injured man was as gentle and as ardent a lover as any she had ever had.

House may not be able to talk, she thought, but he sure knows how to get his message across in bed.

XXX

Part VI ASAP!

(We will get back, eventually, to H/W. Promise!)


	6. Chapter 6

Die Trying

Part VI

By Geelady

Summary: Post Houses Head/Wilsons Heart. SPOILERS! Pre-slash. Hurt/comfort. Some HUDDY in this and next chapter.

Pairings: H/C H/W.

Rating: NC-17, Adult, M.

XXXXXXX

XXXXXXX

Quickly they had come to understand the symbols of House's white and felt board language. "Housian" Kutner had labeled it.

A major "C" was top center with a minor "s" below it, as though it were a chemical formula.

"We checked for Sarcoidosis. Negative." Doctor Hadley said. They had checked for numerous things after yesterday's first differential in "Housian."

House the man had come to the office that morning quite chipper despite his newfound disability.

When House was out of ear shot, Foreman was still making noises that his anomic aphasia could be temporary. "There was no visible scarring on the MRI." He told them again. "Other than the swelling, which has gone down considerable, physically his brain appears undamaged." During differential, other than that it was accomplished in relative quiet and with House's exaggerated gesturing, House's disability was hardly a factor in their group communications.

One-on-one was another thing. Why on the board with simple letters, numbers and symbols he had no trouble, but on paper he did wasn't clearly understood. But then stutterers, Foreman knew, often sang without any difficulty. Maybe House's musical training had something to do with it, though in what way Foreman wasn't certain. As much as they knew about the workings of the human brain - which was a trainload - there were a few dozen train _yards_ of things left to discover.

"If he's having so much trouble with language," Hadley asked, as though reading Foreman's thoughts, "How is it he's able to for all intents and purposes make one up?"

Foreman decided to keep it simple. He didn't feel like going into it again. "Look. We don't even know how the brain remembers. All we know is we _think_ we've figured out that it remembers how to remember."

"And then there's _How_ does it remember to remember how to remember?" Kutner added.

Foreman wanted to get into that even less. Kutner loved all that paradox and "causality loop," as he had called it, stuff. No point in being negative. "House will probably get back most of his speech and written faculties."

"Too bad." Taub remarked, "I'm kind of enjoying the quiet."

Loud honking erupted from House's office. Looking over, Foreman tossed House, who was sporting a shit-eating grin, one annoyed arched eyebrow.

"Dull bike horn." Kutner said needlessly. "That's _you_." He looked at Foreman.

"God, I am going to smash those damn things." Foreman shrugged back into his professional demeanor and answered House's summons.

Foreman opened the door and without missing a beat, "You're really enjoying this, aren't you?"

House pressed a round, red, battery-operated button on his desk, his latest purchase, and a cheap electronic voice said _Oh Yeah!_

"You love suffering, House, because you make everyone around you suffer by default."

_Oh Yeah!_

"What did you want?" Foreman asked impatiently.

House bent over his note pad. This was the only time when his disability (his verbal or written one) became truly obvious to anyone present. The Housian language of irritating bells and quiet symbols, though weird in and of itself, was never-the-less effective. Differentials went on as usual, albeit a trifle more slowly.

But person to person communication was still a slow and more painful task. House wrote for a moment or two then handed Foreman his words.

Foreman read them silently: _rid 2 frpi? bzy . . . _House looked back over what he'd written, then added:_ hr _

Foreman knew _frpi_ was therapy and _hr_ was in reference to the Dean. Cuddy usually drove House to his therapists and lots of other places. Rumor was Cuddy and House were becoming an item, but for an undisclosed reason she couldn't give him a ride tonight. House's speech and written therapy had yielded debatable results thus far but it was not even a month post seizure. These things took time. "Sure. What time?"

House wrote:_ 6 4 . . ._

House paused, trying to think.

Foreman knew House's therapy session took place four times per week from six-forty-five to eight P.M.. He also knew House knew that. But vowels and anything resembling a vowel, particularly when it occurred within a word or sentence, was difficult for him. So it was good for him to practice as much as possible.

As his Neurologist, Foreman was determined to treat House the same as ever. Over his condition, Cameron was doe-y eyed though a far cry from how she used to be and Chase was just happy to be back working in Diagnostics but watching himself lest he get fired again, so he tried to be as nice as possible to House without _looking _like he was trying to be nice (which just _might_ get him fired). House had yet to assign to Chase a noise maker. And Kutner, he played waiter far too much, fetching House coffee and snacks, much to House's amusement.

Taub was just . . ._Taub. _Foreman had yet to see a discernable expression on the man's face.

Holding the pencil tight in his fingers, House finally settled for _6 4 t_

Foreman already knew where. "Meet me at my car." He also knew House would not have asked Wilson. House didn't do the Wilson thing anymore. No one dared speak of it in his presence but everyone knew of the falling out that had occurred between House and the resident Oncologist and former best friend.

Incredible to think of that era now at an end. Foreman, as low as his personal opinion of House was at times, thought Wilson was acting like a jerk. "See you then."

XXX

But differentials being what they were, House could not avoid Wilson nor Wilson House forever. Consults were often a necessity in medicine and House had sent his staff off to run tests and monitor the patient who was showing no signs of improvement. The diagnosis that fit the symptoms the closest was Lupus.

But House wouldn't accept it and Chase and Foreman were not surprised. House often thought such a diagnosis the result of laziness. "It's _never _Lupus." House used to say.

This morning, he had slapped a picture of a wolf head he'd cut out of a magazine the night before and pasted it up on the white board with scotch tape. Then he'd added his symbol for _Negative. _A red diagonal slash in a red circle - over it. Its meaning had been clear: Canis Lupus - the "Grey Wolf" or Lupus Erythematosus, the disease was _No Entry _or_ Negative_.

One of the last possibilities was some sort of rare cancer and that meant a consult with the cancer specialist, James Wilson. House was elected by there being no one else to do it.

He hesitated at Wilson's door, not knocking right away. Actually he looked around in the hope someone he knew might be near enough to cajole into doing this for him. But even if there had been, he wasn't positive he could make himself understood enough to explain what he wanted.

He knocked.

"Come in." Came the familiar voice.

House entered and Wilson looked up, surprised but quickly hiding his emotions behind professionalism. House had a file in his hand and it was obvious what he had come for.

House sat down in the chair opposite Wilson, somewhat gingerly, like he was worried he might accidently sit on one of Wilson's raw emotions and snap it in two. He held out the chart.

Wilson nodded, taking it. He spent a few minutes pursuing it's content before closing it and handing it back. "The patient's stature is small." He looked at House, in the eye, for the first time since he had entered. "Any signs of cognitive trouble?"

House shook his head _No ._ He was very still, waiting. He didn't even thump his cane on the carpet.

Wilson suggested "Could be Nijmegen Breakage Syndrome. Very rare though. Have the team check for microcephaly."

House nodded again in thanks and limped to the door.

Wilson thought he ought to say something that wasn't coldly clinical. "I hear you're doing well with the differentials."

House turned back for a second, actually pausing, his hand on the doorknob.

Wilson cleared his throat. House's face was . . . expectant. Or was it hope?

"That's good." Wilson finished lamely. "That's really good."

House's face returned to it's carefully neutral state and Wilson watched him leave. House's parting look though had said _Oh, is that all you wanted? - To offer a few meaningless words to fill up an awkward moment. Glad I could oblige._

House closed the door harder than he needed to.

XXX

At his therapists, House let go of embarrassment. There was no need when he knew the person, once he was done with them, would be someone he would never see again. But it was slow going.

"Remember to breathe deeply between each attempt. Tightened muscles and anxiety will make it harder."

House's face said _Same words every damn time. Same words not working!_

"Your brain will relearn how to make those words in your head come out in speech. It's only been a month. Stop being so impatient. Rome wasn't built in a day."

_No, I'm quite sure it took three-hundred years or so. _House wanted to snap back, but the words couldn't find the road to his voice box.

The therapist, Georgina, a plump woman of fifty with red dyed hair pulled into a tight pony tail, held up another card: a picture of a table.

He knew the word of course. It was there, floating in the forefront of his mind, but when he reached out to snatch it and make it sound, it would dash here and there, from side to side, just beyond his mental reach. He opened his mouth and a sound resembling "Uamgh" escaped. He sighed.

"Have you been doing your evening lessons?" Georgina was referring to the computer lessons she had provided him, a program that would take him through a repeat of their office sessions during his private time.

_Not really. _But he nodded a lie.

"Really?" She asked again. "I thought you had a hard case?" Georgina wasn't stupid.

House shrugged.

"You need to do those programs. I know you want to progress."

House nodded again, this time sincerely. He'd just had no time lately. But he wasn't going to give up his case.

"Please do them."

House shrugged into his leather jacket, left her office and waited for Foreman to pick him up again.

House stood in front of the building in the dusky light and read the street and traffic signs, all of which he could understand perfectly. But his license had been revoked because he could not reproduce the words sufficiently to convince the Licensing Bureau that he could understand them. And his pathetic writing, . . .

He checked his watch. Foreman was late.

XXX

Foreman drove up to the building where he had dropped House. No House waited for him. He looked at his wristwatch. It was nearing eight o'clock and the light was fading. Probably the session went longer than usual. Foreman double parked, jumped out of the driver's seat and sprinted into the building. Making his way to the second floor and Room 212, he tried the handle. Locked. The place was dark and quiet.

"Crap."

He dashed back downstairs and to his car just in time to avoid a meter cop cruising up and down the streets looking for delinquent meters. His own car would simply have been tagged and towed. "Where the hell did he go?"

He hadn't meant to be so long but a call from another neurologist from Texas had come in, necessitating time on his laptop and he couldn't just drop the call because he had to go pick up his boss.

XXX

House stood in line at the small convenience store a half block down from his therapists' office building. Foreman had dumped him. Fine. He could get home on the bus. He had thought of calling a cab but knew he would not be able to get the words out. He had also thought of asking someone to call him a cab but that would have required he write a note asking.

And that was simply too uncomfortable.

But change for the bus he ought to be able to accomplish easily.

People bought cigarettes, lighters, soft drinks, gum, newspapers . . .

When House's turn came, he held out the smallest bill he could find in his wallet, a ten, and pointed with it to the cash register with, he hoped, a pleasant expression of _please_ on his face.

The sour looking middle-aged man behind the counter with the thin comb-over and case of the non-air-conditioned sweats did not clue in. Unfortunately the counter by the register was crowded with impulse buy items of every description, confusing the issue. House tried reaching farther over, but the damn machine was five feet away at least and all number of knick knacks were between him and the elusive drawer of coins.

"Well?" The man's scant patience was ebbing like the tide and the people behind him in line, a teenage girl in skimpy clothes probably hoping to score some smokes and a business man in a smart black suit on his way home to no doubt, an expensive nearby condo in the sky, waited with widening expressions of _hurry up_. More customers arrived and joined the stalled queue.

House tried pointing directly at the till again, the joints in his arm popping from the reach.

The guy got it finally. "If you want change, you gotta buy something."

House's hope faded a little, but a purchase was easy enough. He quickly surveyed the gum packages behind Sweaty-bald-head, choosing Strawberry. It was wedged in between Citrus and Mint. Both which he loathed.

Baldy didn't know which one he meant.

House was tired now and his leg was reminding him that it had missed its last Vicodin treat. House didn't know how to make this guy understand and was growing increasingly frustrated. All he wanted was some change so he could get the hell home. House figured the best way to solve the problem was to show the guy what he wanted up close and he stepped behind the counter to point directly at his item.

But that did not go over well with sweat man. "Hey! No one's supposed to be behind the counter." He actually pushed House back and none too gently.

House staggard back a few feet and stared at the guy, shocked at the unexpected physical contact. The gum was just eight feet away and cheap at seventy-five cents but it was like trying to secure a rock from a mountain peak by will alone. House looked at the guy with puzzlement. He stepped forward, just a polite foot to try and meekly point at the package of "Crisp Strawberry flavor" chewing gum and was met by the guy's baseball bat pressed up against his chest.

"I've had enough of you. Time for you to go."

With the uncomfortable stares of the other patrons, Sweat Man shoved House to the door of his dreary establishment. But that didn't seem enough for the riled cashier. He then took time to pause and open the door, unconcerned about the store's ungaurded merchandise, then roughly pushed who he saw as just another annoying drunk or high junkie out onto the sidewalk and into the approaching night, barking at him as to how far he ought to go, how to get there and just where to get off.

House nearly fell to the concrete but with the help of his cane, regained his footing, shocked by the man's treatment. While a cripple, House had endured some unkindness. Kids often catcalled out to him as he limped down the sidewalk, mocking his cane or his loopy gate. But for the most part, people were willing to make the extra effort needed to help him out, however briefly. They would open doors for him and allow him to enter first, they would sometimes give up their seats for him or make room for him in a hallway.

No one had ever attacked him. Not because of gum. He had no idea how he had managed to evoke such a violent and unfair reaction from a total stranger.

The man himself didn't appear to care that the fellow he just pushed out the door was a cripple or was not fighting back. He had done his job and kept the weirdo's out of the store as his store owner/manager insisted, but if the guy wanted a fight . . .

Foreman drove up in time to witness his boss and a stranger dancing around what could turn into, Foreman figured considering House's temper, a full-blown fist fight. If the bald guy wasn't careful, he was going to end up with a mouth full of cane handle minus several teeth.

Foreman threw his car in Park and jumped out, getting in between the two as fast as possible. "Whoa - whoa! Cool down." He put his palms up to them and the stranger backed off a little, seeing he now faced two antagonists. "Keep your retard on a shorter leash." He snapped.

"Pardon!?" Was all Foreman said in response to Bald-Angry-Jerk.

"I don't need troublemakers in my store." Jerk added.

Foreman affected his best bad dude look. "Hey, back off man."

The guy decided to do just that and washing his hands of the cripple and his interfering friend, retreated to the store, closed and locked the door and flipped his sign to "Closed."

House limped rapidly to Foreman's car, giving Foreman a hard look as he passed. He opened the door, settled in and slammed it hard. Foreman spread his hands helplessly. "Sorry I'm late. And, yeah, you're _welcome_!" Under his breath, _"Asshole."_

On the way to House's apartment building, Foreman decided to try mending the rift he seemed to have made by saving House's ass. "Look, House, the guy just freaked." Foreman himself didn't really believe that since he had been subject to racial slurs and ill-treatment plenty during his life by idiots who saw him, not as a neurologist or even a person, but simple as a "black guy."

Ignorance breeds fear.

"He probably never had to deal with a mute bef-" Foreman immediately regretted his choice of words and made to quickly correct them. "He's just an ignoramus. We've run into plenty of them in our profession and you'll probably run into more people like that if your speech doesn-" Again he bit off regrettable words.

House stared out the passengers' window, silent and still. Foreman figured House was feeling the sting of helplessness.

Foreman sighed. "Fine. But you're going to have to learn to deal with-"

That was, apparently, the wrong thing to say as well because without warning House swung the rubber tip of his cane across the car's middle cup holder hump and pressed down hard on the brake pedal, bringing Foreman's comfortable sedan to a violent, screeching halt.

Foreman fought to keep the wheel straight. "What the-." He managed to keep the car on the right side of the street. Thankfully there was only one other car sharing the road and it was going the same direction directly ahead of them.

Foreman turned to House to lay into him, but House was already swinging his door open and climbing out. He slammed the door behind him even harder this time.

"House! What the hell is the matter with you? Are you nuts!?" _Duh! _"Where the hell are you going?"

But House didn't look back once and crimped off into the fallen down night.

Foreman watched him for a few minutes then decided to let him be. House was a big boy and he was only a few short blocks from his apartment building. He could take care of himself. With a shake of his head, Foreman maneuvered the car around and drove away.

XXX

House tipped his frothy mug back and drained the last of the warming draft. At least here he could easily make his needs known. Tapping the side of his empty glass, the bartender quickly got him another cold pint with a head on it the size of a soccer ball.

Morrison's was a dark, smelly old English pub with imported beer, whiskey and deep fried pickles, a concoction Wilson had always hated.

There's no accounting for taste.

House drained his mug in minutes and tapped again. In less than fifteen seconds he was staring at his third mug of the wonder brew. Now that's communication. The place was loud with radio station rock music and a jute box in the corner playing out a different tune all together, making conversation a moot point in any case.

Drink. Music. No one spoke to him. No demands. Perfection.

A woman at the other end of the bar was making eyes at him. He knew the woman knew he was a doctor. He had seen the woman question the bartender about him and he knew the bartender knew he was a doctor. Ergo, now the lady knew it as well. House could just read her thoughts: _A doctor! Never expected to meet a doctor in here. Wonder if he's single? How much money does he make? What kind of car does he drive? Where does he live? He's got a cane. A cripple! But, still, a __**doctor!**__ Maybe we can hook up?_

House did not encourage her. He was off the market. Not officially, but he was hoping so. Besides he didn't want company of the female persuasion tonight. He wanted liquid comfort and had it in the form of the greatest drink ever invented. Still, it didn't hurt to be friendly. House smiled over at her. Not a sultry grin that said "I'm interested too.". Just a nod and a half smile of "Flattered but not tonight.".

Last Saturday night with Cuddy had been nice. Really nice and he was hoping for a repeat performance tomorrow evening. Tomorrow morning he would track her down at the hospital and make arrangements for dinner. Maybe wine after at his place. Or hers. Then sex on the couch and more in the bedroom after. This thing with Cuddy - Lisa - was not yet a "thing," but he was hoping it might develop into a "thing" because he liked her. He liked her a lot and he knew she liked him too.

House drank his third beer. Then a fourth and he was feeling pretty damn fine. Loose and happy. Maybe a few laughs with pretty lady would be okay. It's not like he wanted to take her home or anything. Nothing wrong with a few . . .

House remembered that telling a joke was not on the menu. Suddenly he looked into the dregs of his lukewarm beer and wanted to smash it against the mirrored wall in front of him. _Fuck it! _There were other pubs.

House was working on his third dumpy neighborhood boozer and his tenth pint of the evening. The manager guided him to the door. "You've had enough, buddy. Go home before your liver explodes." And shut the heavy door behind him.

House was truly irked that he could not protest his early involuntary departure but walked away down the muggy street. People and buildings swam before him. The air was suffocating soup and the ground a giant waterbed. It was probably time to go home. House staggered into the night and by some miracle found his bearings, pointing his aching head in the general direction of home. Even with three legs, navigation was unsteady.

XXX

When he woke up, he was not curled in his comfy bed, nor even flopped like a sack of flour on his hard couch.

He was in the hospital and Cuddy was standing over him glaring down with something relative to righteous fury permanently etched on her features. "What the hell were you thinking!?" She asked. Not a shout but it resounded inside House's skull like a brass chorus. He winced and kept his eyes tightly shut at the sudden onslaught of pain.

He tried to form an answer then remembered he couldn't. Well, at least he didn't have to make up an excuse or lie. He could just stay still and listen to her tirade and eventually she would go away and he could sink into his massive beer induced lake of pain, drowning in peace and quiet.

"You are still recovering from a serious concussion, a heart attack and a grand mal seizure, not to mention the anti seizure and heart med's. _And _the Vicodin. _And_ your own overall self-destructive idiocy!"

House nodded, hoping she would take it as an admission of guilt and shut up already.

She didn't. "I sent Taub and Kutner to see what became of you when you didn't show up for work today."

If he waited . . .

"And they found you on the floor in your hallway _unconscious." _She leaned in to whisper the next part. "They thought you were _dead."_

_Sort of feels that way now._

"What if you _had_ died? Do you ever stop to think what that would do to those who care about you?"

House just looked up at her and sighed. It didn't do shit. No Wilson anywhere in sight.

"They brought you here in an ambulance because your respirations were so depressed. You threw up all over the EMT's and almost choked on your own vomit."

_Ah. The dark night of the soul unfolds._

Cuddy lowered her voice and stood nearer to him. But, he noted, she did not hold his hand _this_ time. "What were you trying to do, House?" She stared into his half-opened eyes. "Are you _trying_ to hurt yourself? Is this some kind of personal penance or punishment?"

_Take your pick. _But he shook his head.

Cuddy shook hers too. "House . . . " She left the sentence unfinished but he heard the fear, and disappointment, in her voice. "I have a hospital to run." She said and left on fast, hard heels.

House lay there for hours, being force fed dry toast and pumped full of fluids of the non-alcohol variety.

Still no Wilson appeared.

Penance, then. Though apparently not enough.

XXX

Part VII ASAP


	7. Chapter 7

Die Trying

Part VII

By Geelady

Summary: Post Houses Head/Wilsons Heart. SPOILERS! Pre-slash. Hurt/comfort.

Pairings: H/C H/W.

Rating: NC-17, Adult, M.

XXXXXXX

XXXXXXX

House seated himself at his desk to nurse his two-day hangover. After chastising him from his head to his ass, Cuddy had released him after a twenty-four-hour observation. "Just to be sure," she said, "that you haven't stepped closer to that precipice you keep toying with."

House spent another twelve hours at home recuperating before returning to work.

-

-

-

House Blew the slide whistle, honked the bike horn, rattled the Maraca and finished with a rising shriek on the Zinger. He hadn't yet found an appropriate noise maker for his newest-oldest charge, Chase, so with him he just thumped his cane and glared.

His fellowships and Cuddy-sponsored partner, Foreman, all gave him hard stares. House was standing by his multiple boards not four feet from them. He already had their attention via close proximity.

House didn't care and started this differential with a look that said _I may not be able to talk but that doesn't mean I can't still be an ass_.

House placed two _Negative_ symbols over _C s_ (Cancer-Sarcoidosis) and _N B S_ (Nijmegen Breakage Syndrome) on the felt board to his left. To his right was a blank slate and he looked at his seated Whistles expectantly.

Three days post bar night, and four differentials later, they had eliminated the obvious probabilities and a host of possibilities. When no one spoke right away, House looked back to the _Negatives _with a comprehending eye. He took up his black marker and on his white board drew a bowler's hat - the kind Sherlock Holmes wore. His meaning was clear. When all of the possible explanations are eliminated, there remains one - the impossible.

"A rare, adult onset sudden allergic reaction?" Chase suggested. At House's pursed lips Chase figured he must have just made a first year med.' student blunder. Which one he couldn't say, but at least he was back working for House. He had missed the challenge of diagnostics that surgery just didn't offer. Cuddy had approached him asked him in fact. Asked him to work with House again for the simple reason that she wanted someone there to keep an eye on House when Foreman wasn't around. Cuddy had scheduled their shifts to overlap. Foremans started at seven A.M. and finished at five, and Chases started at three and finished at midnight. It was just as well. He hated getting up early.

House gestured to the board and looked at Chase. He was waiting, Chase realized, for more elaboration on his allergy idea. Perhaps he'd spent way too much time around Cameron to have come up with what he was about to say. "Trauma, stress coupled with suggestion? Her symptoms have been getting worse with every hospital visit. Maybe this is just underlying mild Rheumatoid arthritis and the rest she's doing to herself?"

House didn't seem unpleased by the idea other than he pointed to one of the negatives on the first felt board. It was the letters' _RH_ with a _Negative_ symbol overtop.

"I know, but not all immunity disorders present with RH factor. Maybe we're being fooled?"

House decided to add it to the current felt board. He dug around in his little boxes of sorted symbols and letters and came up with another _R_ and added the symbol indicating _crazy, hallucinating or stoned_, the fellowships interpreting by context. It was a simple drawing of a human eye though bugged out and with a spiral pupil. House stuck that up beside the _R. _

Hadley asked, curious to test him, "What if a person is in a vegetative state, sleepy or just really lazy?"

In answer House produced three alternative symbols. A picture of a stalk of celery (House kept stacks of magazines and young children's books close by if he needed to locate a picture on the fly), for _vegetative _(making it obvious that House found no room for political correctness when it came to saving someone's life), a droopy eye with two _z's_ above it circled by a fluffy cloud to stand for _sleepy_, then he placed his marker on the white board and quickly sketched a potato in a man's hat. Beside that, just so it was clear to her, he wrote out in his stunted English _lze_. He looked at Hadley to see if she got them. She nodded her head sheepishly.

House gestured with his cane, a kind of one-handed motion as though he were the putter and they the golf ball, and shooed them out the door.

(As punishment later that day, in between lab tests, House charged Hadley with cutting out more pictures from magazines and books to add to his collection, leaving the choice up to her. House had at least two dozen tiny boxes of symbol or body part categories and two more for the alphabet, one each for Major and Minor letters. It took Hadley the better part of the afternoon before he released her from the increasing pile of paper and cardboard cutouts. Hadley silently vowed not to question his system again. At least not while in his hearing.)

House paid Cuddy a visit.

Cuddys' office door opened and a whirlwind entered in the form of House. He couldn't yell at her, which was a pleasant experience, but he could gesture and bang his cane around, which was hard on the furniture. But somehow House had got wind of Cuddy's underhanded manipulation of his staff and their work schedule.

"Chase stays and the work schedule isn't being changed one bit." She said before he had a chance to do anything other than glare at her. "Until _you_ grow up and start taking care of yourself." She watched him fumble through his coat pockets and look around on her desk top. She knew he was trying to find something to write on. She handed him a slip of Sticky note paper and pen.

House sat in her visitors chair and concentrated on making himself understood. She waited while he bent over the paper in his lap. Finally he rudely thrust the thing at her - one of the few ways he could "yell".

Cuddy read the painstakingly printed words and symbols. _1 tym! , _then a symbol - a square with triangle on top, clearly to stand for "house", followed by _stp drnk _followed by a stick arrow pointing right and lastly, _btr_

""One time"? When is anything _ever_ just once with you? And you _were _getting better, then you went ahead, drank a keg of alcohol and endangered your life. Did you even pause to consider that amount of drinking could have killed you? I'm letting you work within a narrow frame, here, House. One more stupid move like that and I'll suspend you until I'm damn good and ready to have you back."

Cuddy didn't want to have to do that. House working was just what he needed to get well that much faster, unless he continued to drink or neglect his health. In that event he might never fully recover.

She was very fond of him. He was an incredible doctor. But was he a stable enough man to build a life with? Or even a relationship? Cuddy was beginning to have misgivings about their one date. She was heart weary from seeing his white face lying unmoving in ICU with tubes down his nose and circles beneath his eyes.

Cuddy was not going to allow herself another date with House until she was certain it and he was what she wanted above all else. Until she was positive she was willing to handle what would entail getting involved with Gregory House, Cuddy would make no moves.

House, pen still in hand, hesitated to rise from the chair.

Cuddy suspected she knew what he wanted. "I think we should hold off on the dating thing until you're well."

He stared for a few seconds then set his jaw, nodding.

Was he disappointed? Angry? Cuddy couldn't tell. She said with some level of gentleness. "Go work."

XXX

Hadley, Taub, Chase and Kutner brought their findings to Foreman.

"Why aren't you talking to House about this?" Foreman slipped on his suit jacket and gathered up his briefcase. He was going home.

"Because he refuses to even consider this is Lupus." Hadley said.

"I thought you were tesing for an allergic-stress reaction?"

"Done. No response to treatment for any common allergies. We even put soothing music in her room and sedated her. Stress is eliminated. No change. It's Lupus. It's the only thing that fits." Taub answered.

Foreman shook his head. "That doesn't make it correct. We thought also thought based on the symptoms that it was Nijmegen Breakage Syndrome, except it wasn't."

Taub said what the team had been secretly discussing. "House can't do his job."

Foreman stared for a second. "For a man who can't talk, he's doing just fine."

"We're not talking about his physical ability to do his job. We're talking about his judgement." Hadley said.

Foreman looked at Kutner. "And you?"

Kutner looked uncomfortable. "House is looking for mysteries that aren't there. It's like he's determined the case is more complicated that it really is so he can, . . ."

Foreman repeated, "So he can . . . what exactly?"

"So he can prove himself." Kutner finished. "Look. I respect Doctor House, but he's been through physical trauma and a few weeks later, here he is back at work."

Hadley added. "We all admire him for what he's been able to achieve despite his injuries and the aphasia, but he may not be thinking straight _emotionally_."

"He may be trying so hard to prove he can solve a big mystery case that he's _making_ it into a mystery."

Hadley finished. "It's not a mystery, Doctor Foreman. It's Lupus."

Foreman looked at the three fellowships, considering whether he should believe three student doctors or one brilliant proven one. But House had been to hell and back physically. How could they be sure he was really okay and not just regarding memory or ability? House wanted to prove himself. Cuddy wanted to let him.

XXX

"I know House wants to prove himself. I know you want to let him. Hell, even I think he's probably okay." Foreman stared at his bosses boss and his bosses new flame if rumors were true. "But what if he's not?"

Cuddy remembered House's emotional outburst earlier. But House always burst out emotionally. He was as volatile guy. If anything, shouldn't that of his personality which had _not _changed tell her he was okay?

"What does the team think it is?"

"They think it's Lupus."

"Do you agree - because you _also_ think that, not because House might be wrong?"

Foreman considered. Most of the woman's symptoms fit Lupus, other than there was no RH factor in her blood tests. But that fluctuated even in people with confirmed cases of Lupus. "Most times, Lupus is diagnosed because everything else that it _could_ be is eliminated. We've had her here for nearly a week. She's no better. In fact, she's slipping. Swelling and pain is worse. Heart rate is up and down, rash has spread from her chest to her abdomen . . ."

"If you treat her for Lupus and it's not - "

" - I know, steroids can tank her immunities. But if we start her on low dose and administer it slowly, over several days, we can more easily monitor her response more accurately. If it's Lupus, the change will be gradual too. If she's gets better, we were right."

"If you're wrong?"

"She's going to die anyway. We have no more time for tests."

Cuddy considered the options which were few where House was concerned. She would effectively be taking him off the case. If she went against the advice of four other physicians and the patient died because House wasn't being objective . . . "Treat her for Lupus."

Foreman nodded.

XXX

House slammed the door to his apartment. It was one of the few noises he could still make and take satisfaction in.

In her office just an hour ago, Cuddy removed him from the case before he had sufficient time to diagnose the patient.

-

-

-

_Whatever happened to trust?_ _A week ago it was atta' boy, House Now it's "you're finished."!?"_ He had wanted to yell at her. But his mind or his will or voice box would not obey.

_"I didn't say you're finished. I said you're off __**this**__ case."_

House had stood in her office feeling like a man sinking for the third time and there was no coming up again.

Cuddy had assured him he was not being fired or suspended or anything but being given time to recover. _"__**Emotionally **__recover. You need that time, House. You're ignoring symptoms and overlooking the obvious. We understand you want to prove yourself, but the patient's life has to come first. That's why we have sign on this building that says "Hospital"."_

House had stormed from her office the only way he could now. Not with a smart remark tossed back over his shoulder but a hard bang on every door he stepped through.

-

-

-

House, ignoring Cuddy's orders for him not to drink, poured a large tumbler of bourbon he'd had waiting for him on his book shelf, quickly throwing back nearly half of it. The fiery stuff trickled down his gullet, searing a path to his stomach with a delightful burn. But, due to his being on the wagon for the last week and a half (well, he was _supposed_ to have been on the wagon but secretly had been taking just a few drinks each day. But a few was kind of like being on the wagon. A few was less than a bottle), it also entered his bloodstream and brain rapidly, bringing to him a bit of calm.

House looked across the room at his guitars hanging on display behind the piano. He would play the electric tonight. He hadn't touched them or his piano since before the bus crash. The rest of the world, emphatically including Plainsborough Hospital and staff, could go fuck themselves. All he needed tonight were some tunes.

House shed his jacket on the couch and lifted the electric down with loving hands. Seated at the piano bench his adjusted the strap over his right shoulder and found a few scattered picks on the mantel.

What should he play? What did he _want_ to play? Maybe a little Neil Young, BB, Malmstein or Floyd? He settled on some Yes and maneuvered his left hand to the fret board while his right index finger and thumb gripped the medium hard pick.

Only his fingers didn't seem to want to move. House checked his hand to see that it was in the correct position. He stared at his left hand that had in a brief interval gone from being his familiar and obedient servant to acting independent of him. He shook it as though it were sound asleep and tried again. It wouldn't obey and finger a chord.

It didn't know how.

In his chest House felt his heart sink and rise like bile all at once. He stared at his hand with the useless pick in it that held no purpose anymore. Like a warped Cinderella story it had gone from something wonderful to a piece of plastic all with the strike of a second on the clock.

Or the strike of a speeding truck against the side a bus.

House unhooked the guitar strap from himself and lay the guitar aside against the arm of his easy chair. He stared at the instrument as a man who, intending to pick up a vacuum, had grabbed the guitar by accident.

Maybe he was wrong, though. House picked the instrument up again and cradled it in its rightful position.

But his hands would not obey him. He could not find the musical path from his mind to his fingers. The door to the music store was bolted and the sign read: _Closed for . . . perhaps forever and ever and ever . . . _

House held it in his hands not quite believing that his mind would betray him that much. That it would deny him not only speech but the speech that needs no language.

House suddenly found himself in an anguished rage and smashed the guitar - it was just wood and strings. It was nothing now - not to him - and he pounded it against the piano bench again and again until it splintered and several strings snapped. He flung it across the room to see it crash against the bookcase where the bourbon sat. Golden alcohol sprayed furniture and stained books as the bottle shattered wildly.

House, breathing heavily, sat at the piano bench. He expected nothing from his fingers here either and was rewarded with the awfulness of being right.

He wished he was wrong just this once. But uncoordinated fingers placed upon the keys plunked out a ridiculous sounding tuneless noise. His fingers were made of tin. The piano was a stranger. He played like a blind cat stumbling across the keys.

House found another bottle in the back of his kitchen cupboard above the fridge.

House sat at the piano, not wanting to leave it yet, not wanting to believe this small but treasured part of himself was over, and drank one, two, three tumblers because he felt the panic of it inside himself. The knowledge, the fear, that he would never again be the man he was left him deaf to hope.

House lay his head against the piano's edge and stared down at the white and black keys. He felt as if someone had taken a pair of scissors and cut him full of holes. There was no differential for this. No made up language would replace thirty-five years of playing and loving music - relishing it, _rolling in_ it daily like a dog on a summer sidewalk.

He wondered if _this_ was penance enough for Wilson.

He wept.

XXX

"House resigned." Cuddy opened Wilson's door and didn't even pause to see if he was with a client or not. He wasn't.

Wilson looked up from his paperwork at the unexpected visit and even less expected news. "Why did House resign?"

Cuddy thrust a faxed paper under his nose. "He states he doesn't believe that he can do his job effectively anymore."

"Is that true? You said he was doing well."

Cuddy sat, put her hands flat on Wilson's desk, trying to find at least some physical support for the disastrous was she had handled the situation. "He was. He, . . . I thought he was."

Cuddy felt lost as to what to do with House. "I don't know." She said again. "The team thought he was being over emotional, like he was so desperate to prove he could still do his job that he was risking the patient."

With sarcasm as thick as cookie batter, "House risk a patient? There's a new one."

Cuddy bit her lip. "They said he was trying to make the case more mysterious than it was."

"Did you talk to House about it?"

Cuddy hadn't. She hadn't even asked him about it. She had simply believed the team and taken him off the case. She felt her hope for him all tied up with sorrow and the sorrow tangled up in pity. Also she felt the _need_ to help him. She _wanted_ to help him. "No. I suspended him from the case."

Wilson knew that meeting could not have gone well, but he wasn't sure what it was Cuddy wanted from him. "What are you going to do?"

"I don't know. If I put him back on the case and they're right . . ."

"Do you think they're right?"

"I don't know. Maybe."

"Hasn't diagnostics always been a maybe? House is the man of last resort. If he can't figure it out, pretty well no one else can." Wilson wasn't trying to sing Houses praises but it was essentially true. House was a kind of genius about it.

"Will you talk to him?"

Wilson sat back and shook his head, waved his hands, waving away another disastrous meeting that could only make matters worse. "No. No way. _Now?_ You think he'd listen to me? That's . . . House and I . . . that's over." Wilson turned his attention back to his paperwork. "Besides, he has always listened to you."

She didn't think so this time. "For how much longer are you going to ignore him?"

"I can't deal with House any more."

"So you don't care that he resigned? It doesn't bother you that he may never work again?"

Of course he cared. He cared like hell. He just felt too much pain from losing Amber and he was too angry to do anything about it. "I don't want to see House . . . hurt but at the same time I can't get over what he did."

"How many years are you going to blame House for Ambers choices?"

"It wasn't her choice." Wilson went back to his paperwork. "For once House can pull himself up without me."

Cuddy tilted her head. "He's where he _is_ because of you."

XXX

Part VIII ASAP


	8. Chapter 8

Die Trying

Part VIII

By Geeladyff

Summary: Post Houses Head/Wilsons Heart. SPOILERS! Pre-slash. Hurt/comfort.

Pairings: H/C H/W.

Rating: NC-17, Adult, M.

XXXXXXX

XXXXXXX

Wilson placed a folded newspaper under her nose. It was not like him to ignore good manners and knock first before he entered someones' office, but this morning he had burst in with the object in question clutched in two viselike hands.

Cuddy saw Wilson had in red ink circled a small newspaper Ad in the Household Items subcategory.

The Ad described some musical instruments for sale, along with price and a phone number. Cuddy skimmed over it with faint interest, far more curious about her employees' out-of-character behavior.

"Do you have any idea why House would be selling his piano?"

Cuddy couldn't think of one. House had marvelous fingers when it came to piano keys and guitar strings. Also a few other things she wouldn't mention. "No. This is _his_ Ad?"

"It's his cell phone number."

"Well. Maybe he's getting a new one?" She honestly couldn't understand why Wilson was bothered by it. She was a little curious, but then her mind had been occupied with House continuously since she'd been forced to suspend him.

"No." Wilson spoke emphatically, as though he knew she was wrong because he knew something she didn't. "As an intern, House saved his pennies for two years to buy that Baby Grand and House doesn't save money. _Ever_. It cost him seven and a half thousand dollars used. He loves it. He won't let anyone else place their drink on it because of the circle marks. House plays it every day. He _talks_ to it."

Cuddy was flustered by Wilson's insistence to discuss a man he had recently insisted he wanted nothing more to do with. "Why does it matter to you? Aren't you and he "over" as you put it? Honestly, you two are like estranged lovers."

It was Wilsons' turn to look uncomfortable. "It's just . . . weird."

"Well, why don't you go and ask him?"

Wilson stared at her desk piled with back logged billing and business letters to answer. "I, . . . I can't. House and I . . ."

Cuddy had heard all she could stand of Wilsons' squalid self-pity. "No. No, you can't. You're hurting, you're in mourning because you've lost the love of your life. We all get it, Wilson, because we've all been there at one time or another.

"No one's forcing you to love House." She stood and began to sort through the have-to's in her various piles. "No one's even disputing that the man is a self-focused, everybody's-an-idiot-but-me pain in the butt. I'm going to enlighten you. You're no different. You've spent weeks mooning around with a face that says "_Feel Bad For Me"_." She drew a spread hand across her chest. "You may as well have it stenciled on a tee-shirt." Cuddy walked around her desk and stood in front of him.

"You claim you're through with him, then walk in here and give me a House history lesson. House lost out too. His best friend for starters. He's lost his _speech. _And he's all but lost his job." Cuddy thrust stapled sheets into the crook of one arm, indifferent to their significance beyond the need to physically vent.

"Yes. We're sorry for you. You _have _lost a lot, but it's only because you _had_ a lot. Here!" she thrust the folded newspaper back into his hand. "You want to know why he's selling his piano? Go and ask him. Go be a human being again. My god! Even the members of the _House-Haters_ Club think you're acting like a jack-ass. Go and talk to your friend, because if you don't," She beat him to her office door. "you're going to lose him too."

Wilson swallowed his anger at House for a minute. It didn't feel bad to do that. It didn't feel good either. Yet. "What do I say to him?"

Cuddy looked back at him, finding herself suddenly exhausted. "Thank him for what he did for you. Tell him he's important. Tell him you love him."

XXX

Wilson made a detour to House's darkened office. He wondered if maybe . . .

Wilson opened the top drawer of House's desk. The key was there. He pilfered it and stuck it in his pocket. He wasn't sure what he was going to do yet but it felt comfortable having the key back.

He drove home.

XXX

After work and after her conversation with Wilson had hung on her thoughts the rest of the day, Cuddy drove to House's apartment. There was no answer to her knock. She felt she knew House quite well and cared about him deeply but still didn't feel comfortable with the idea of just using the key. (House had kept the key tucked away above his door frame but had lent it to her after their one very memorable date), at least not yet.

In the relationship department any further exploration of it had been brought to a premature halt, not only in momentum but in feelings. With all that was happening . . .

Cuddy had been searching and sifting through her feelings for the man for years. This last year she had helplessly felt her feelings for him grow and change. Nor an exception was the year before, where House seemed to have come to a decision of sorts regarding how _he_ felt about her. He had spent the better part of a year flirting with her, teasing her, making obviously suggestive comments, asking for kisses set inside the frame work of a joke when it was clear he was _not_ joking. House had even followed her on a few of her dates with other men, making attempts to insert himself between her and the hapless fellows, as though protecting what was his.

House liked her enough to feel possessive and that without a single kiss. And it felt good - flattering even.

But lining up all the complexities of House and her emotional feelings for him against the backdrop of her own desires for the future, Cuddy was stunned to discover that she was not in love with him. That he would not fit into her world of stuffy executives and fund-raising. Dinner parties within the social circles of her administrative echelon. People like _Vogler_.

Did she care for House? Yes. Very much. Physically, did she desire him? Yes. He was sexy and pleasing in the bedroom.

_Intellectually_ House was a fascinating man and a challenge. He possessed wit and an endearing, quirky charm.

But House was also one of the hardest responsibilities she had ever taken on.

That was the part that now gave Cuddy pause. House was a huge load to bear around on her already heavily laden forty-two years old Dean of Medicine shoulders. The rigors of her professional responsibilities wore on her twenty-four-seven.

Day to day, what would _he_ be like to carry around? Could she find sufficient room for him in her heart? How would _he_ fare in her personal everyday life, not just in her professional?

House would probably require very little in the way of social niceties or sentimental tokens, but would by his nature consume the greater portion of her soul and heart.

How would it feel, she wondered, to sit in the ICU waiting area whenever House again decided to risk his own health, or even his life, with an experiment designed simply to solve a case? How many sleepless nights spent worrying whether he had taken too many pills along with too much alcohol? How often would she find herself wondering how many years he had left on his abused organs?

Standing on the perch of his doorstep, Cuddy reached an inescapable conclusion. She felt a hollowness on her chest because of it. Not so much because of what she now knew she would not be able to enjoy with him, but also guilt because she knew her decision was right. It was the best decision for _her._

It hurt just the same though.

How depressing it was to know that despite the rich history she shared with House, with someone who potentially had so much to bring to an intimate, romantic connection, that actually being _with_ House wouldn't work. With his penchant for bringing heartache and worry to those closest to him, Cuddy now accepted that it was a flaw in him that, for her, would be too much to bear.

Cuddy didn't think she could do it. Not when she only liked him a great deal but did not love him - not in _that_ way. Not deeply and unequivocally. Not enough, even after all these years.

Wilson had relished the joys and carried the burdens of Gregory House for fifteen years. Such a weight can only be bourn from long seated love - something beyond brotherly. A love - a perpetual _loving _- that sunk deeper than friendship, which teased the edges of it and embraced the sweet, the bitter and the angry. A love cherished and rue-ed over in fact, but never abandoned. An intimate love _just other _than sexual.

Cuddy almost laughed aloud while standing unmoving on Houses door step.

_Wilson._ Wilson was the person House belonged to. Despite his anger at the man and sorrow over Amber's death and what he perceived as Houses part in it, Wilson was the partner House needed. Life had chosen him it seemed to, almost to the exclusion of all else, care for House. Wilson was the only one who had ever managed to navigate the wild and unpredictable terrain that was House. For years he had somehow accomplished it with hardly ever a stumble. In some unusual or incomprehensible way, Wilson was made to balance or complete the imbalanced and drifting soul Greg House.

Suddenly Cuddy wondered if the men had ever slept with each other. Rumors had always abounded in the hospital about that. Rumors both men insisted were untrue. She had never believed the stories but now she was given to some speculation about it. Rumors often began with a partial fact or a single truth and became stretched and distorted over time, sometimes cruelly.

What was the case here?

Cuddy shook herself from her doorstop reverie. She put the apartment key back in her pocket, then changed her mind and placed it on the ledge above the door. It was hidden away again.

During the twenty minute drive home, Cuddy traveled full circle and accepted that she was _not_ the person who should take on House for a life time. There was only one person capable and who she was certain in the end would himself realize it. She only hoped he did so before it was too late.

XXX

It was after eleven and everything was dark but for the glow of the television House had left on. The hallway walls shrunk to a cone of blackness. The kitchen was in deep shadow.

Only the television was alive with a chubby business man in a grey suit. His face smiled beatifically while extolling the virtues of a cure-all "Secret Amazonian Wonder-fruit" that promised all sorts of health benefits and opportunities to make millions.

Wilson heard nothing from the bedroom but quietly peeked in. Enough light from a street lamp seeped through the window blind to reveal that House was not in bed.

Wilson returned to the living room with no real idea of why he had decided to come. And come so late. Wilson pondered it. Did he come to make sure House was all right? Urged along by his confusion, Wilson wandered to the piano that stood in one corner of the square living room. It felt weird being in Houses' apartment when, for the first time ever in their shared history, he knew if House came home and found him there, he would probably be kicked out on his ass.

The piano bench.

Its thick lid that served as a seat and to conceal a music storage cubby, was scarred and cracked, the black paint missing in places where the wood had been assaulted. Behind the bench on the floor next to the wall was a sight so out of accord with the familiar peace of the room that it was tantamount to stumbling upon a corpse. The smashed remnants of Houses' "Flying V" electric guitar lay in a heap. Its sound-body was splintered and cracked. The fret board was broken in two like a child's limb. Broken strings dangled helplessly.

Wilson picked it up and examined the furious destruction of one of Houses' most loved possessions. Why would House do this? _Had_ House done it? Had a hooker stiffed of her fee done it?

Thirsty, Wilson wandered to the kitchen, leaving the broken instrument on the couch as he did. Switching on the light, he was horrified to find House lying on the floor, sprawled on his left side, fluid trickling from his right ear.

Wilson knew he was dead, just like he knew two years ago. Then, his terror that House was dead on his livingroom floor had, much to his relief, proved incorrect. But that was then and this was now and no one could enter their friends' apartment, find him lying still on the floor and for the second time expect to discover that he was still alive. No one gets to wake their best friend up from death twice.

But for this time.

Wilson found that House was breathing but definately unconscious. Beside House lay the shards of a broken glass. The sweet smell of spilled whiskey permeated the confining room. On the counter sat an open loaf of Wonder bread and a package of exposed processed meat slices. Their curled, dried edges told him House had been lying there for some time. As Wilson dialed for an ambulance, he subconsciously noted these facts while his heart pounded and his fear mounted.

Once he had hung up the receiver, he returned to his friend on the floor. After checking his pulse and airway, Wilson shone the tiny flashlight that most doctors carried with them into House's pupils and was relieved to see reaction in both. But House felt cold and clammy and non responsive to his touch. Making a quick examination of his neck, spine and limbs to rule out serious injury, Wilson covered House with a blanket, sat on the floor carefully avoided the shards of glass and with his legs straight out, lifted Houses' head onto his lap. Wilson sat there, holding onto him with a veneer of outward calm but an inner storm of terror.

Wilson knew now, sitting there on the floor of Houses' kitchen, holding his sick and possibly dying friend in his arms, that he had come there tonight to try and repair a friendship of fifteen years, one he had ended without justifiable reason. He had come to attempt to glue back together a relationship, and a man, that he had torn apart. His knee-jerk reaction to the events surrounding Ambers death had tainted his judgement and so all but ruined a good friend. Wilson had come there to try to right his wrongs and hopefully be granted forgiveness.

There on Houses' floor with his dying friend in his arms, Wilson started shaking as he grasped that he may have waited too long.

XXX

Foreman was running the differential by virtue that his boss was the patient.

"Maybe something happened during the D.B.E.S? Maybe something in his brain was nicked?" Kutner suggested.

A quickly protesting Chase, who had performed the procedure, asserted, "The D.B.E.S was text book. Clean insertion. I did _not_ screw up."

Foreman was quick to sooth. "We're trying to find out what's wrong with House, not assign blame, so consider it."

Chase sat forward, linking his hands together on the conference table, going over the procedure in his mind. "The drill site, the insertion and the placement of the electrode were exact. The environment was sterile and we checked him for all the common hospital bourne infections like Steph', Enterococcus and a few others besides. All negative. I had my eye on a real time, living image of his brain during the entire procedure. I did not "nick" anything."

"And his L.P. was clean." Taub said.

Foreman asked the group. "So why is he unconscious?"

Kutner responded. "Well, the MRI showed no bleeds, no infarct's, no masses. His brain is healthy other than the aphasia."

Foreman added. "Which itself doesn't make complete sense. We _should_ be seeing scarring or a bleed of some kind."

Hadley frowned at Foreman, thinking. "What if we've presumed where we should have questioned?"

When she had their attention, she explained her meaning. "House is suffering from aphasia. He can't talk and that indicates some kind of damage to Broca's area in his left hemisphere. We've assumed there _is_ damage because of the aphasia. Our logic had been circular. Almost exclusively as far as we understand aphasia occurs because of scarring or bleeding into the brain, but two MRI's have shown no evidence of either one. What if the aphasia was caused by the accident?"

Taub shook his head. "The concussion happened on the right side. No where near Broca's area, if you're thinking some kind of-"

"-I'm not. I asked what if the _accident_ caused it, not the concussion." She looked at each of them for support or dispute. "What if something else occurred, some other kind of damage, when House struck his head? Something we can't see on an MRI."

Kutner lent some weight to the suggestion at least. "That bus rolled a couple of times. House was probably thrown around quite a bit."

Taub doubted it. "It's a good idea. But if the MRI's are _that_ clean, what sort of damage could it be?"

"Something too small to be seen, something hiding." Hadley was warming to her own idea. "There's three or so pounds of stuff in the brain all packed tightly together. It's possible, isn't it, that an MRI could miss something?"

Foreman conceded. "Possible yes. Likely . . . ?"

Kutner offered, "Maybe the damage is deeper? Micro bleeds that on the MRI look like brain capillaries."

Foreman pointed to the board and the first word on it - _APHASIA "_Again, systemic brain bleeds, even tiny ones might cause a stroke or confusion, but not just aphasia."

Kutner bit his lip. His bright brown eyes lit up with an idea. "The damage might be in the callosum."

Foreman pointed to the board, and the first word, again.

Kutner nodded but, "What of something is pressing up against the corpus callosum? Interfering with shared or lateral right, left processing? Language production?"

Foreman thought for a few seconds. "That could cause speech or comprehension problems. Or both. But we would see impaired right brain functions - like abstract thought, intuitive and algorithmic processing. Does anyone see House having a problem with that even though he can't talk?"

Foreman couldn't help but let his mind play with the idea. He paced to the coffee machine and poured a cup in a ghostly imitation of House. Even Foreman caught himself at his own House-like actions and left the cup where it was. It was hard to stand up there and lead a differential and _not_ move around. It helped him relax.

Suddenly it occurred to him that was why House paced too. House, the doctor with the painful leg, still spent an awful lot of time on it, walking back and forth and moving around the room fiddling with this toy and that book while conducting his differentials - while he was teaching, for all intents and purposes, a _classroom_.

House felt the need to be relaxed, to feel comfortable in front of them just like any ordinary person.

"I'll be damned." Foreman muttered with a tiny, mysterious smile of revelation. But he quickly thrust his mind back to Hadley's presented equation. "With mid-brain damage, there might be some language problems . . ."

And there _was._ Still the theory wasn't defined enough to start cutting into someone's brain in the hopes of finding damage a three million-dollar machine with cellular sized imaging capabilities couldn't find. "It's a good theory, but it's not enough to-"

"-Hang on." Chase stopped him. "Wilson told me he found House's electric guitar smashed to hell." He looked around at the group. Clearly not musical people. "Well, isn't the right brain responsible for musical comprehension and ability?"

Foreman tilted his head. "Some of it. The different constructs of musical ability are processed in a lot of different areas. Listening to music and especially producing it is a heavily-layered left-right function."

Kutner looked at them all. They seemed to have diverged from the _specific_ point Chase was trying to make. "What if House sat down to play his guitar and found out he couldn't?"

Hadley asked. "I thought he played all the time?"

"He used to bring his Flying V to the office. I haven't seen it here since before the accident." Kutner asserted.

"That doesn't mean he hasn't recently been playing it at home." She countered.

Chase. "With what he's been through physically in the last few weeks . . . ? Somehow I doubt Hendricks has been front and center."

Foreman reminded them all. "Two MRI's showed no swellings anywhere in the brain. No bleeds. No masses." He looked at Hadley to see what she could do with that. "What sort of_ invisible_ damage do you think it might be?"

Ever since Chase had mentioned the broken guitar, Hadley had been cogitating a possibility. "A tear in the posterior cerebral artery."

Taub wondered where her mind was. "A _tear_ would mean a bleed and not only would that show up on an MRI but a tear of that nature would have made House a vegetable or dead moments after the accident."

She stared right at him. "Not if the tear was partial. Not if the artery was damaged but still intact."

"That's a stretch." Foreman said. "There's a lot of stuff in there but there's also space between the stuff. Like the callosum and the posterior artery. It would have to be a hell of a partial tear to affect the function of the hemispheric bridge."

Hadley had thought of that too. "Unless House had until recently been doing something to minimize the damage, reduce the pressure inside the artery so the tear was left flush with arterial wall."

"If that's true, then, as House would say, "Something has changed" for it to have suddenly affected his musical training." Chase mused. "What?"

"Alcohol." Kutner said. "House has been drinking. A lot. And we don't know if it has_ just_ affected it. House might not have figured it out until yesterday."

Chase remembered and immediately added "Wilson mentioned he thought House had been drinking every day. _Throughout_ the day." Chase added.

"Until recently." Foreman repeated and looked at Hadley. "I'm not sure alcohol would cause that much of a reduction in arterial pressure."

"House was suspended." Hadley said. "Which would make anyone upset. He can't talk and now he can't do his job. If he's been playing since he was a kid, he'd be terribly upset about suddenly having lost his musical ability. He has been upset, and yesterday it all came together in one place. His blood pressure shot up, the artery wall expanded, the tear or flap's thats been pressing against the callosum increased its pressure or moved, affecting his left-right functions."

"Explains the aphasia and the possible loss of his musical talent - which we can only assume at this point. None of it explains why he lost consciousness."

Taub did the run-down. "Unless the damaged artery has formed an aneurism that hasn't burst yet. High pressure pre-tear, tear pressing against the callosum, less blood flow post tear, combined with the effects of alcohol and extreme emotion."

He looked around at them. Not all were completely convinced. "We've seen people pass out for less." He reminded them.

Foreman decided that now it was theory worth running with. "Okay." He wrote POSTERIOR ARTERIAL DAMAGE, POSS' ANEURISM under APHASIA and UNCONSCIOUSNESS. He turned back to them. "How do we confirm it and then what do we do to fix it?"

XXX

Part IX ASAP!


	9. Chapter 9

Die Trying

Part IX

By Geeladyf

Summary: Post Houses Head/Wilsons Heart. SPOILERS! Pre-slash. Hurt/comfort.

Pairings: H/C H/W.

Rating: NC-17, Adult, M.

XXXXXXX

XXXXXXX

"How about his tox' screen?" Foreman stood before his fellow members of Houses' team.

"Clean." Hadley said. "Other than Vicodin and alcohol."

"What about his anti seizure med.'s?" Chase asked.

"No idea." Hadley answered. "If he is, it didn't show."

"Well, it would be just like House to take himself off something designed to keep him healthy." Foreman remarked. He looked up when Cuddy entered the conference room.

"How's it going?" She asked, addressing herself to Foreman.

"He's still unconscious." He answered. "But we have a working theory. I mean a theory we're working on."

Cuddy nodded, trying to feel encouraged. Foreman gave her the gist. "We only hope we can figure out a way to fix it and save his life."

"Or at least tune it up a little." Taub said. No one knew whether it was a joke designed to relieve tension or just Taub speaking in his clipped, lifeless tones they were all accustomed to.

No one had yet heard the man tell a joke or smile in a way that demonstrated he possessed a sense of humor.

-

-

-

Cuddy entered Wilsons office and found him sitting staring into space.

"No patients due?" She asked.

He checked his watch. "Not for twenty minutes."

"Good." She hadn't come to talk, just to sit where she wasn't alone in a place where no one who needed her administrative skills could press her into action. "Foreman has a theory."

Wilsons eyes drifted to her face. Frankly he had lost hope. Perhaps hope had not been lost but he felt he perhaps deserved to lose it anyway. He had let himself be eaten up by Amber's death and in doing so had discarded someone who needed him. And, though reluctant to admit it to himself, whom he missed and cared about. House. His friend who's only fault had been trying to do the right thing.

Since finding House unconscious on the floor, Wilson himself had been soundly reminded that failure was not the same as disregard or indifference. He rubbed his eyes, then his whole face. "What theory?"

She sighed. "There might be damage other than the concussion." She explained the idea the team had come up with.

"So not a diagnosis but a vague - a very vague - idea. A _guess_. This is good news?" Wilsons heart sank. House had come back from the dead plenty of times. The man seemed indestructible, but here he appeared to be going down, losing the fight, strike by strike. Pieces of him were beaten already. And the rest might soon from sight and touch. First he had lost his speech. Then his music. It was hard to picture House not playing air-guitar during lunch. Then his job was taken. Now consciousness and possibly the last grains of life in him were nigh being blown to the wind by Houses' hopelessly outclassed team.

In so many ways House was one of a kind. Wilson had almost forgotten that.

Cuddy was saying encouraging things. "If it's there, if it's true, maybe it can be repaired." Lots of if's. Expectations when things were desperate didn't rise very high.

"I, . . . I never . . . House could die."

Cuddy was not willing to believe it either. Cuddy repeated something she had heard once from a friend. "Everybody's dying."

Wilson's heart pounded. Houses' words struck a chord - like a funeral bell. Is that how House really saw the world around him? The people? All things were in the process of dying, of leaving, so why fight it? Why get involved? Why _care? _So how can a man live and hope for anything? In Houses' case, how does he live happily without it?

Wilson had not intended to strip him of hope. "I've had my head up my ass for so long I've given shit-faced new meaning." He said.

Cuddy didn't laugh. "Have you seen him?"

"No. I didn't want to get in the way."

Cuddy smiled ironically, and a little scoldingly, at him. "You have never been in the way for House. You've _the _way."

He shook his head once, his brows coming together, her meaning escaping him.

"I help House cope with his professional life - sometimes by restricting his insane actions, often just by making him do his job. Or regularly disciplining - or punishing - him with Clinic duty." She smiled as she saw one corner of Wilsons' mouth rise.

He had always suspected it. Cuddy had plenty of nonspecialist doctors to work the Clinic. She almost never asked Doctor Wilson to pull a shift. House she made work there because it was good for him.

"You're the one who helps House cope with everything else." She then shrugged in accord with what they both knew. "House is a child." May as well admit and accept it. It was the way it was. "A genius but a child. Why the two have to go hand in hand is _my_ punishment."

Now the other corner and Wilson smiled for the first time in a month.

"Wilson. House doesn't want your friendship or counsel - or even your love. He _needs_ it."

Like a film on fast-reverse, his mind pictured so many times, so many things, that supported her words. The break up of House and Stacey had sent House so far down Wilson had started to worry that he might not get up again. Oddly, no one else had noticed.

And there were so many other things . . . House never wanting to see his parents, yet they seemed perfectly pleasant people. Dangerous self experimentation and not only to solve a case. Drugs, drinking, driving too fast, preservation of job flying in the face of Vogler and his millions. _Faking cancer. _Possessing an uncanny understanding of what it feels like to be the outsider, the reject, the weirdo. Yelling when someone wouldn't give him what he wanted. Every-so-often giving of himself or his sympathies just when you thought he didn't comprehend or even give a damn. Though you could never predict when.

Not a murmur of complaint when the Ketamine failed. That in itself should have told Wilson something. He should have seen, despite his conduct to the contrary, that House had expected it, that he somehow believed because it was _him_, it was too good to last. The good ending would not be his. It never was.

House wasn't a child. He was an orphan.

"A child with the brain that's far too big for his own good." He laughed just a little. It felt strange in him now, but good. "And let's not forget ego."

"Children don't judge themselves." Cuddy said.

No, they don't. They don't see it when they're about to do wrong. Therefore, they don't know enough to stop themselves. Wilson leaned forward. "Okay, I think we're in agreement where we've accepted that House is a brilliant, egotistical, irresponsible, irrepressible _brat_. For God's sake, don't let him know that's what we think or we're done for."

Cuddy smiled. "Please, _God_."

XXX

Foreman. "Okay. Two MRIs didn't show this _invisible_ damage. Please don't tell House I ever said anything so ridiculous."

Chase smiled. As a doctor who had worked alongside Foreman for three years, it was interesting to note the changes that had occurred during the time away while working in Surgical. Foreman had actually developed a sense of self-depreciating humor. A year ago, Foreman had quit over fretting that he was turning into House. Foreman wasn't House. He didn't need to be. He was doing just fine as himself.

"So? Other ideas? We cannot cut into Houses brain without knowing where to cut and what to fix."

"Sonography." Hadley suggested.

"Different than an MRI but not better. It won't show what we need to see." Taub said.

Kutner drummed his fingers. "We need contrast."

"Yes. But MRI uses contrast and all four of us saw nothing." Hadley said.

"Radio pharmaceuticals." Kutner said. "We inject a radionuclide like Technetium into his vascular system. It bonds to the blood proteins, gets distributed to the brain. We get a sonograph of his head."

Foreman liked it. He looked around the room for any dispute. "It should work."

Chase said. "House is going to kill us when he wakes up bald."

"As long as he wakes up." Foreman wanted this, his first differential diagnosis crises, to be a success and not only for Houses' sake. "Let's do it, and use the high frequency. I want those vessels in his brain to light up like the Las Vegas strip."

Kutner said as they scrambled out the door. "Straws on who gets to do the sonograph and who has to shave his head."

XXX

"Jesus." Taub said, looking at the sonograph along with the rest of the team. They were all crowded around Houses' light board. A very small flap of vascular tissue was pressed up against the underside of the lateral portion of the left callosum. From beneath the dangerously thinned artery bubbled a very small but potentially deadly aneurism. The tiny section of Houses' brain in question had been computer enhanced and enlarged four times. It was still hard to see, but otherwise an obvious abnormality.

Trying not to sound too pleased, "There it is." Foreman said and walked to the white board.

Foreman was none-the-less personally proud that the team had come up with the diagnosis under his guiding tutelage.

The team took their seats.

Foreman flipped the white board over. The board was free of marks. A blank.

"Now what do we do about it?" Foreman wrote on the board POSTERIOR BRAIN ARTERIAL ANEURISM and beneath that SEVERELY WEAKENED ARTERIAL WALL. He underlined "severely". And beneath that he wrote IN VINO SURGERY IMPOSSIBLE! Then he qualified the last line. "That is, opening his skull would almost certainly kill him. We can't risk any elevation in his cranial pressure. We can't get at the artery where it is without In Vitro brain surgery - removing the brain from the head which no surgeon has ever done and which would kill him anyway - or by cutting through the callosum which would make him more disabled than he is now." Foreman looked at the list. "Not to sound insensitive, but who here wants to look for another job?" He wrote IDEAS? and underlined it. "Go."

"The best way to keep his BP under control is to lower it right down. We cool him."

"That will slow his blood flow and thicken it." Hadley answered. "A risk for clot or occlusion. And it could starve his brain of oxygen."

"We hyper oxygenate it." Taub suggested.

"Risk of bubble." Kutner answered him directly. "He's already had a heart attack recently. He's been on heart pills, anti seizure med.'s, and his liver's loaded with Vicodin." Kutner looked at Foreman. "In my opinion it's too risky."

Kutner liked House. Foreman new that and nodded but said "Anything we do at this stage has risk. Not doing anything for fear of the risks will kill him too."

Kutner thought a few seconds. "Then we go with Taub's idea but we drain him first."

"Drain him?" Chase said. "You think that's _not_ risky?"

"Not if we cool him and oxygenate the third we leave behind. His brain gets the O2 he needs, we get the drop in pressure we need. Maybe it makes more space between the callosum and the arterial tear. We go in a use a patch on the artery."

"Only we can't patch it from without." Foreman pointed at the top line of the white board. "We touch that aneurism and it pops? - House is dead."

"Then we patch it from inside the artery." Hadley said. "We go in through the carotid in his neck with a sheathed filament to prevent any further injury to the artery. We hold the artery in place, patch it from underneath and drain the aneurism right after, we draw the anuretic blood right back through the patch into the artery itself."

"The patches _are_ self sealing . . ." Foreman liked the idea. He wondered if there was a vascular surgeon anywhere in New Jersey, one House has not insulted or blackmailed, willing to do it.

"But how do we move the tear away from where it's resting against the callosum?" Taub asked.

Foreman considered. "Chase, you ever participated in an inverted op'?"

"Watched one. You want to use gravity?"

Foreman nodded. "It's the only way I can think of that'll move the callosum away from the tear. Once the filament is in place, we raise him and very, _very _slowly, and I mean by about one degree per minute, rotate him thirty-five degrees. Hopefully gravity will pull the brain sufficiently down and away from the tear. _Then_ we patch it, drain the aneurism and leave him in place until it has had enough time to adhere. Then we go in again, and from inside the artery pull the torn flap back into place."

"It would heal naturally." Hadley said.

The four sat quietly, mentally juggling the skills needed for the techniques involved, the huge risks all along the way and the potential benefits to their patient - a possible across the board recovery of his faculties.

Foreman spoke first. "If anyone has a better idea, now's the time."

No one spoke.

XXX

"Are you kidding me?" Cuddy asked.

Doctor Foreman set his lip and raised his eyebrows.

He wasn't.

"This is the procedure you've come up with?" Cuddy asked. "I've seen the sonograph. It could be an aneurism and a flap or it could be a _smudge_. And you want to fix this smudge with a procedure that's so risky it's almost sure to fail?"

Foreman spread his hands. He knew Cuddy had to question it. It was her professional responsibility and her job as Dean of Medicine. "Either way, it'll eventually burst and kill him. Probably sooner than later."

Cuddy sat back. It was risky and brilliant and it was the only way House might recover. She didn't believe House would blink more than twice at the risk of carrying around an anuretic time bomb in his skull. He would probably remark flippantly about how everybody, everywhere will die someday then jump on his motorcycle to go ride the highway at a hundred and fifty miles per hour - _if_ he were conscious and could _speak. _She did know House would almost certainly not accept his life with the disabilities the anuretic tear had imposed on him. Either way, they would lose him.

Foreman insisted. "This is the best diagnosis for the symptoms and the only treatment option that will restore his function. And it's not a smudge. It's an aneurism."

"That _might_ restore his function. I hear a tiny "maybe" in all that certainty."

"This diagnosis and treatment best fit the symptoms." Foreman repeated. He would repeat it as long as necessary and Cuddy knew it. They were out of options and, considering Houses unconsciousness, out of time.

But Caution was Cuddy's watchword unless it was House standing before her. Then it was Restrain him as far as possible under the circumstances. "Those "symptoms" being: House can't speak, we _think_ he can't play guitar and he's unconscious."

"Yeah." Foreman waited. "As far as we can see, this is our only surgical option. He'll die if we don't try this. And even if he doesn't, he'll be as disabled as he was - maybe worse."

With uncharacteristic vehemence - "This _sucks!" _Cuddy blurted. She loved House. She loved him _alive_! Cuddy waved a dismissive hand at him. "Go. Do it." She hoped Foreman was as good as he thought he was.

At least as good as his patient.

XXX

House was out of surgery and recovering in ICU.

"Has he woken up yet?" Wilson asked.

"No." Cuddy answered, watching her old flame struggling to live yet again.

Wilson entered the room and seated himself on the wingback chair. Why do hospital rooms always supply for the visitors, chairs so low that when they sat in them, they couldn't see their loved one?

House was as white as the hypo-allergenic pillow and about as gaunt.

The intubation device had been removed an hour before and only a sterile patch taped to his neck and a nose cannula remained to tell them he had just skirted death again.

"I _hate_ this look on you." Wilson muttered.

Houses' eyes moved beneath his lids and opened. For a few seconds it appeared he was staring up at nothing like the "Andies" the Red Cross used upon which people trained in CPR. Hollow, unblinking blue eyes. Plastic stand-ins for living ones.

Then House turned his head slightly to the left. His eyes shifted to Wilson and latched on.

Wilson decided to start with something non-confrontational. Hopefully something non-emotion-of-any-kind-al. "How are you feeling?"

House opened his mouth. To Wilson's dread, nothing came out.

Then, "I-iz bn' a . . vac-c-ation, _i . . idi-t!"_

A bit weak, and bit hesitating and mumbled . . . Wilson smiled, flashing House freshly brushed teeth. In fact he had primped in front of the mirror before coming for this visit. Nervously he had combed his hair four or five times. Paced back and forth in the men's room and straightened his tie at least a hundred. He wasn't entirely sure why. He just wanted . . . to make a good impression. Somehow.

House was thin and pale. He was sick and not out of the woods yet but still . . . five words.

He had spoken words.

Where Wilson cared as lectures went, it was the best one House had ever given.

XXX

Part X ASAP


	10. Chapter 10

Die Trying

Part X (Final)f

By Geelady

Summary: Post Houses Head/Wilsons Heart. SPOILERS! Pre-slash. Hurt/comfort.

Pairings: H/C (less so) H/W(more so).

Rating: NC-17, Adult, M.

XXXXXXX

XXXXXXX

"It was the guitar." Wilson sat and talked to him. House was only twenty-four hours post-surgery and Wilson didn't know if House was grateful for the company, specifically _his_ company or not, but he wanted to be near House. Wilson had weeks of self-pitying to make up for.

"We found it smashed and started to speculate why you'd do that. Was it because you were angry or because you could no longer play? The arterial breakage had been pressing up against your callosum since the accident, causing a very specific aphasia though three MRI's showed nothing. The _amusia_ was probably there since the accident, you just didn't know it because you hadn't gone near your instruments since.

"Then Cuddy suspends you and naturally you're angry about it. The thinned arterial wall expands, balloons the aneurism already present and pushes the flap harder up against your callosum. You sit down to play and discover after thirty-five years you can't remember how." His voice was very gentle. "Understandably upset, you react by smashing your guitar. Your BP shoots up, the aneurism expands even further, blocking just enough blood flow to your brain to cause you to lose consciousness."

Wilson smiled at the irony. "If you had not been drinking since the accident - against all medical advice - and thereby keeping your BP artificially down, and if Cuddy had not suspended you, or if you had not tried to play, got angry, smashed your guitar - all of that - you might have carried that aneurism around for weeks or months before one day it burst and killed you."

Only at the autopsy would he, Wilson, have been able to see how much House had actually sacrificed and suffered trying to save a woman whom he had believed was going to eventually take away his best friend.

"I miss-judged you in every way possible." Wilson rested his strong hand on House's weakened one. "All I can say is I'm sorry. I'll let you rest now. You're probably sick of participating in this _awful _emotional moment."

House grabbed Wilsons' hand before he could leave. A fine growth of new hair had already appeared on Houses' scalp. Wilson privately amused himself knowing it would grow in as curly as ever which hair House hated on himself. He'd spent years training it to lie flat. Now he would have to start all over.

Wrapping his pale fingers tightly around Wilson's and, considering his lack of strength, painfully. Haltingly, "Y-y-y-yo-you h-hurt m-m-me." House said.

Dropping his eyes down and away, Wilson nodded. Yes he had hurt him and he wanted to stay and let House vent on him - tell him he was an idiot and a jerk and didn't deserve his forgiveness. It was true. All of it. But that had to finish second because right now Wilson realized, listening to Houses' words, though spoken much more clearly than just yesterday, had worsened in their delivery. The hesitation, the stutter, had not improved. "I know." Wilson said. "I know I did. But right now I have to go. I promise I'll be back after dinner. I'm going to try and make it up to you. Somehow."

House released his hand.

Getting House the help he needed was a good place to start. Wilson headed to Houses' office where he knew Foreman would be. Foreman was there, cleaning up paper-work and watching that happening anywhere in the vicinity of Houses' desk was a novelty.

Foreman glanced up at Wilson, then back down to the forms. "How's House?"

Wilson didn't answer immediately causing Foreman to look up again with the question still there on his face.

"I'm not sure."

Foreman heard the concern and diverted his attention from the forms, which he had to do but any excuse to leave them would be welcome, to Wilsons' worried expression.

"I think House has a stutter." Wilson said but held out one hand as though to stop the idea from going too far without some input from the Plainsborough's resident Neurologist. "I mean, he's stuttering and I don't think it's by accident."

"It's not uncommon when someone is recovering from a brain injury to his speech center for his words come out a bit garbled, hesitant.-"

"-he wasn't hesitant. And I thought his speech center was never actually injured, just the callosum between his right-left hemispheres? His _words_ are fine, but he's stuttering. Badly."

Foreman abandoned the paperwork and paid a visit on House.

XXX

Foreman reported his findings. "By the time we discovered it, the pressure of the arterial flap against the callosum was weeks old. We shouldn't be surprised that it caused some damage to the connecting nerves. Nerve tissue is very delicate and depending on the severity of the injury can take weeks, months or years to resume normal function - if ever.

"In an accident, like a bus rolling over and over, there is a rapid deceleration of the brain. In Houses' case, he went from a violent tumble to a dead halt. That is what caused the concussion. But _any_ rapid movement of the brain within the skull puts tremendous strain on it. Delicate nerve fibers, blood vessels and the interface between gray and white matter like the callosum can be wrenched or stretched to the point of damage. His callosum could have been left bruised - microscopic bleeds, frayed - microscopic tears or even stretched. Sometimes nerve bonds actually separate. With House it could be any of these. Or it could simply be nerve cell death due to the pressure of the arterial flap having rested against that area of his callosum for so long.

Foreman took a breath. "House is speaking fairly clearly, that is - his words are proper English with only an occasional slip-up. As for this stutter . . ." Foreman shook his head at Cuddy because it was impossible to know. ". . . it could be permanent but we just don't know. As far as anyone knows House never stuttered and there's no family history of it. But damage to the callosal pathways that coordinate hemispheric activity during speech _**is**_ a reasonable explanation."

Cuddy rubbed her temples. "But House _can_ talk, understand and otherwise speak normally?"

"Yes. There's no sign of outright brain damage. So far his faculties seem intact." Foreman looked at the ceiling for a second, preparing to deliver the last bit of news.

Cuddy saw it. "Just tell me. I haven't had any bad news for three minutes and my meter's gotta be running low."

Foreman did a run down so it would be clear to her. "We know the crash caused the concussion. We _thought_ the D.B.E.S. caused his very specific aphasia and the amusia which even House didn't realize he had until recently. We were wrong on both counts. The damage to his callosum sustained during the crash caused both these conditions. His symptoms tell us there is damage to the nerves and because of that we have no way of knowing what else - what other faculties - might have been affected."

"You mean like memory? You think-?"

"-I don't know. This sort nerve of damage is extremely hard to detect even on an MRI or the specialized sonograph like the one we did. We _can't_ know what other damage there might be or how bad until it manifests itself via a symptom. _If_ it manifests at all. Everything else might be just fine."

Her stomach hurt. "Not if his luck holds."

-

-

-

Cuddy had no illusions about House. She was cognizant that if they were to have declared love for each other, it would in no way spur House to change. House had great difficulty adopting to altered expectations and he possessed no compunctions about doing exactly as he liked while excusing himself on the journey.

When it came to change-town, House rode in on a limping mule. Only sometimes did House listen to her as his boss. Still, House, though less than a lover, was more than an employee. He was an old friend.

The only other person who seemed able to exert any lasting influence over House was Wilson and Cuddy was confounded as to how the man accomplished it.

House looked at her now and being no idiot knew why she was there. Their second very brief love affair was over.

"I care about you." Cuddy took his hand. "But we both know for it to have any chance one of two things would have to happen. Either I would have to resign my position at this hospital or you would." Cuddy felt a little guilty but she knew she was right and by the look in his eye, so did he.

"I kn-kn-know."

It killed her to hear him, a man of such intelligence and rapid-fire wit, sounding so much like a man starting over again from scratch. "Because I could so _easily_ fall in love with you, House."

Cuddy released his hand and stood up, leaning over him a little. Those telling blues never left hers for a second. "But you would run roughshod over me and we both know it. I already allow you greater license than any doctor here. And just to prove it, I tore up your resignation. You're not getting out of your tenure that easily." She shook her head but smiled in horror at the medical monster she might have made of him. "But my heart in your hands?" Her smile widened. "You could probably have talked me into almost anything."

She leaned in and kissed his mouth. More than a peck, less than smooch. "I'm glad you've got your voice back." She raised one wicked eyebrow. "But then, Greg House with his mouth shut? That's awfully hard to beat."

After a smile shared from long standing, House watched her go, feeling a little sad and a little relieved. All things being equal, he had almost nothing to offer her in life. She was better off.

XXX

Wilson opened the door for him and House allowed him to enter his apartment just like he had allowed Wilson to drive him home. House himself stepped in and looked around. The place smelled fresh and everything shined, including his piano. He glanced at Wilson. "Y-y-y-ou c-c-c-c-cleaned?"

"Yes. A little welcome home present."

With misgivings, House looked at the piano but did not go and inspect the keys to make sure Wilson hadn't used any harsh cleanser in them. It didn't matter. Instead he sat on the couch.

Wilson sat on the chair opposite and leaned forward on his elbows, his hands clasped together. "Wanna talk?" We could discuss baseball? Work? Steve? . . .My idiocy?"

House shook his head. "D-d-don't want t-to t-t-t-talk."

Foreman had explained to House, and privately urged to Wilson, that House needed to speak as much as possible. Wilson ventured. "House. You have to."

House shook his head again and gave Wilson a stony look that said volumes_. _"I d-d--don't _have_ t-t-t-to d-d-do anyth-th-th-th-thing."

"No. But you _need_ to, to get well."

To House it was incredible how quickly Wilson could presume to assume his old standard. That of _the_ interfering role in his life. "W-why a-are y-y-y-you h-here?" House tried to shoot out the question harshly like machine bullets but the stutter, delaying and weakening their delivery, make them sound - to his ears - pathetic.

"I want to help you."

"I d-d-d-don't _wu-wu-want_ your h-h-h-help."

"House. You've recently spent weeks in the hospital. The Vicodin is probably out of your system now. You could easily adapt to some other pain-management system. You don't _have_ to become an addict again."

House brought his cane down hard on his coffee table, causing a sharp crack that echoed in the room, making Wilson jump. "Y-y-y-yo-you _**f-f-f-fick-k-kle**_ s-s-on o-of a b-b-b-bitch!" Houses' blue eyes flashed and he fumbled in his pocket for his bottle of Vicodin courtesy of Cuddy. "Y-y-y-you w-w-wr-write m-me off a-a-and n-now wu-wu-wu-wu. . . " House took a breath and tried to concentrate. Strong emotion made the stuttering worse. "A-a-and now y-you wu-wu-want t-t-to be ma-ma-my p-_pal_?? G-gi-gi-give m-me a-a-advice?"

House was right. But, "I hate to see you back on those. I need to know that you're okay." _That we're okay._

House smiled down at his little pills, shaking his head at Wilson's words of _I _and _need_ and wanting to _help_. "S-so it's f-f-fine to l-l-l-let a-an-an ad-ad-ad-addict d-do a co-co-consu-sult, o-or eat wu-wu-with an ad-ad-addict, or d-drink wi-with one, o-or e-e-even l-l-let an ad-ad-addict r-r-isk his l-l-life to su-su-su-save your gu-gu-gu-girlf-friend, it's ju-ju-just n-not okay t-t-t-to _bu-be_ an ad-ad-addict!"

Wilson knew he deserved it. Houses' anger made him ache inside._ I'm a hypocrite too._ "I'd like to try and make this, you and me, okay again." He said quietly. Very quietly. He wondered if maybe, just maybe, it really was too late to fix anything.

House swallowed a couple of Vicodin and leaned back against the couch. He was exhausted. Another week spent in a hospital bed and he had seen all he ever wanted to see of food trays, catheters, bed pans, fat nurses and Wilson.

House, speaking quietly from sheer fatigue. "I wa-wa-wa-was d-de-de-_desperate_ t-to sa-save A-A-A-Am-amber."

Wilsons' heart pounded with the thought of her. And with the memory of Houses' horrible seizure. It had gone on for a minute at least and, at the time, he and Chase were positive it was going to kill him. But House was right. When House loved, he cared to his marrow. He loved obsessively. Not perhaps the healthiest way but better than his own way - that of keeping up appearances.

Cuddy was correct. He had loved Amber, but he had loved the grief over her more. "I punished you. I made a mistake."

"Th-th-that wu-wu-wasn't a m-m-mistake, it wu-wu-was a de-de-desertion."

Wilson swallowed his old grief over her, tasting strongly his new grief over House and his sudden sure belief that this was useless. _I have been shockingly dense. _

Wilson also knew House had tried his best. But Amber dying in his arms had sent away all sense of propriety and forgiveness. His grief had refused to believe House was capable of such self sacrifice without a personal agenda. Even now he didn't truly understand why House, considering his dislike of Amber, had so quickly given the nod to risking his own life to save hers.

Wilson only now recognized how ignorantly and unfairly he had treated House. And how ungratefully. _I __**am**__ fickle._ "I know." He did not know what else to say. It seemed words, this time, were going to be inadequate. He stood and moved over to House, right next to him.

"Maybe you can't forgive me." Wilson hoped House would though. He had hoped Amber wouldn't die but she did. He hoped he could take back the cold, unfeeling things he had said, but he couldn't. Words were feathers thrown to a wind.

Try getting them back.

"I don't know if I can repair," Wilson gestured back and forth between them, "this. But I was kind of hoping you would be, well, _bigger_ than I was."

House had to lean his head back to actually look at Wilsons' face. His tall, slim friend was standing so close, House could have hugged his boney knees without moving an inch. "I'm t-t-t-tired. I-I wa-wa-wa-want t-t-to g-go t-to s-sa-sa-sleep."

Wilson nodded and let himself out.

XXX

"She's been re-admitted."

House looked up from his computer screen. He was, to everyone's mild surprise, not looking at porn but researching. "Who?" One syllable words were sometimes easier.

Foreman looked uncomfortable. "The woman we treated for Lupus. Her husband's brought her back in. An hour ago. Cameron just called me."

Despite everything he had been through, and the stutter he had been left with, House managed to look smug. "S-s-o -- _n-n-n-ot_ L-le-lupus."

Eventually they would not even hear the stutter, Foreman knew. If they each continued working for House, their own brains would quickly learn to disregard the impediment. But right now, it still took a little getting used to.

"Yeah. We were _wrong_. I get it. Should I call the team together or not?"

House nodded. He stood, gathering up his cane and his courage. Behind him on his long book shelf were stacked the many boxes with the many cardboard letters and symbols of his invented former silent language. He wondered if his speech in its current state would be faster than "Housian", or slower.

-

-

-

"N-n-n-not La-la-lupus. Th-th-then wa-wa-what?" House stood by his sole white board, waiting for ideas. At least his writing had returned almost to normal. Only a few small errors made it from his brain to the board now.

No one spoke. They all wore varying looks of mute sympathy.

House was tired of everyone tip-toe-ing around him. "S-sa-sa-stop wo-wo-worrying ab-b-bout m-me and st-st-start th-th-th-thinking a-b-bout th-the pa-pa-patient!" He tapped his marker on the blank board. "I sp-sp-speak f-funny. Sh-sh-sh-she's g-got l-l-lesions ov-ov-over h-half her b-b-body and i-is _d-dying_. N-now wa-what else!?"

"It looks like a Stephen's Johnson reaction." Chase suggested. "High fever and burn-like lesions."

"R-rare b-bu-but p-p-possib-ble." House wrote it up there. "No-no-normal-ly, St-st-stephen's J-j-johns-sons is n-not c-c-c-conf-fined t-to th-the t-to-tor-torso a-and l-legs."

"A rare reaction yes." Chase asserted. "But dozens of things can cause SJS including some common things like streptomycin and herpes complex. Maybe this is an unusual case. She has poor circulation, the reactant drug could have been become concentrated in her lower extremities because of the edema."

"That's a long shot." Foreman said.

Kutner answered for Chase. "But not out of the question."

Foreman added, "If this was SJS, her skin would be sloughing off by now. Its been a month."

"Unless the drug that caused it was quickly neutralized by something else." Chase said.

Foreman shook his head. "Like what?"

"I don't know." Chase answered. "But we're shooting blind and House wants _any_ ideas. Do _you_ have one?"

Kutner did. "These could be drug triggered fibromas. She's post-child bearing years, in her mid-forties. Did she ever have treatment for varicose veins? Injections of sodium tetradecyl sulphate is a sclerotherapic treatment for varicose and sometimes it can irritate the vein walls to the point of causing fibrosis. Fibromas can look like lesions just like hers."

Hadley reminded Kutner. "But her _veins_ are not on her skin."

"I _know._ But if even a single treatment was accidently injected into a lymph node, even one, it could have been distributed via lymphatic capillaries and then through-out her lymphatic system, ending up on her skin."

Hadley was not convinced. "Except for her epidermis which has no connection to her lymphatic capillaries."

"But it does with the dermis." Foreman said. "We're finding these lesions on the surface of her skin, but they might be truncated - separate and pushed up from below, right from the dermis."

House looked at Hadley. "If th-there's n-n-no m-m-more n-noise f-from th-th-the jeer-i-i-ing s-sq-quad, it g-goes o-on the b-b-b-board." House wrote it down then dismissed them with a wave of his marker toward the door. "Tr-trace t-t-test for s-s-s-sodium te-tetrad-d-dec-cyl sulph-ph-phate. If p-posit-tive, s-st-start her o-on c-c-cor-cortico-co-cost-steroids. A-and f-for th-th-the eh-es j-jay ehs, k-k-keep an eye o-o-on her. I-if her s-sk-skin sl-sl-sloughs o-off. I-i-i-i-it's eh-eh-s j-jay. S-s-same Tr-tr-treat-m-m-ment."

After they left, House picked up his cane, his patient's file and limped his way down the hall and around the corner, pausing in front of Wilson's door. This time though he didn't knock.

Wilson looked up when House entered. "Hey." He had not expected House to want to interact with him. He figured he had blown the friendship into too many pieces for them to be re-assembled into something recognizable.

House sat in the visitors chair. "He-hey." He handed the file to Wilson who accepted it and spent a few minutes skimming its contents. He looked up at House. "This is your lupus patient."

House shook his head.

"It's not your lupus patient?"

"It's m-my p-p-patient b-b-but she d-doesn't have la-lup-p-p-pus."

Wilson pursued the file's content again. "There are cancer's that can mimic other diseases - lots of them actually. Sometimes when we're looking for something hidden, we miss the obvious."

Wilson handed the folder back to House. "Sorry I can't be more help."

"Th-thanks." House said and stood up.

"House." Wilson was looking at his notes but kept talking. House got the impression his friend was embarrassed about something. "Um. I thought I'd bring dinner by tonight." Now Wilson looked at him. "If that's okay with you?"

House thought for a moment, then nodded. As an after thought, "Ch-chin-n-nese." He told Wilson. "A-and n-n-no _t-tofu. _I h-hate th-that sh-sh-shit."

Nodding, Wilson indulged in a little smile after House left. It appeared House was ready to, if not forgive, then allow him to buy him food - which in itself was a very good sign. Wilson had been thinking a lot about the events that lead up to Ambers' death and had reached some conclusions about some things and some questions about others.

Suddenly a thought occurred to him. He dialed his own home phone number, punched in the code for remote access and listened to his messages. There were a dozen at least. He had not checked them since . . .that night.

Several calls had come from his two terminal patients (only the terminal got his home phone number), two from Cuddy asking him how he was. One from his parents reassuring him that it had been a beautiful funeral and wondering why they had not heard from him since. Two were automated voices offering subscriptions to magazines he had never heard of.

Wilsons heart thudded. Ambers' voice was suddenly speaking, telling him she'd be late getting home.

And then Houses' voice (sounding quite drunk. Drunk for House - slower but still demanding): "Wilson. I need a ride."

Wilson swallowed the lump in his throat. Amber had not shut off the answering machine. It had recorded the whole conversation.

Amber: "Wilson's not here."

House: "Then find him. I need a ride."

Amber: (a heavy sigh) "I'll come pick you up."

House: "No. Find Wilson. You hate me. He loves me."

Amber: "Wanna' bet? I'm coming. What's the address?"

House: "Just tell Wilson to come to Sherri's Bar."

Amber: "What's the _address?"_

House: "Don't know. Send _Wilson_."

A click of a phone being hung up and then the squeal of the machine ending the message playback.

With a trembling hand, Wilson replaced the receiver. House had not asked for Amber at all. She had made the decision. She had gone, taken the drink, stepped on the bus, took the pills and in doing so signed her own death certificate

House had asked for help and then tried to help her, and her boyfriend who was his closest friend whom he loved, almost dying for his trouble.

XXX

House wasn't in the mood for talking, it seemed, as Wilson and he ate in silence. It wasn't the comfortable silence two long time friends would share, it was an awkward, hurtful silence that neither knew how to break.

Unable to endure it any longer, Wilson thrust aside his bowl and chopsticks and plunged in. "House. I want to . . .to start again. I don't know how to do that unless we clear some things up. Why were you in the bar that day? You were in a bar getting drunk on a workday in the afternoon. Something must have happened that day or that week that you're not telling me."

House had finished his food and was watching his own fingers tracing a pattern on the arm of the couch.

Wilson could see something unspoken in Houses' eyes but had no idea what.

"Are wu-wu-we st-still s-s-sp-speak-king mu-mu-metaph-ph-orical-ly?"

Wilson stared, not certain if he understood what was being said to him. Then he sat back in the easy chair, covering his face with his palms. He thought, maybe, he understood. His mind thrust him momentarily back to that hallway and Houses' face there, watching his own as he flippantly flirted with House, mentioning "couple" and "always back to us" and "together" and Houses' face curious. Curious. Intrigued even. The whole time, nakedly intrigued and with a lingering look Wilson knew had followed him to his office.

At the time he had dismissed it like he had been dismissing House after he'd met Amber. Neglecting his friendship. Not one lunch appointment kept, hardly an evening spent together doing anything they used to do, not allowing House in on anything personal anymore. Not allowing House to share anything without Amber being able to wheedle it out of him.

But with this, he had to be wrong. Wilson wasn't prepared to ask any questions beyond, "Were you upset with me? I know you didn't like Amber-" Another picture of them standing in Cuddy's office and House asking his boss to make a schedule so he got some Wilson time. It was just House being his usual controlling self. At the time, Wilson had not considered that maybe House had felt humiliated having to do that. That maybe he was missing Wilson and felt it was his last resort.

But Wilson did not feel ready to confront what he thought was being _un_-said. "Had you lost a case?"

House sighed. He rubbed his own face.

God, he looked _tired. _"I had no right to blame you for her death." He couldn't talk about the other thing he suspected House meant but that they had _not_ talked about.

Heaving his weight onto his cane, House rose to his feet ands limped to the door. He shrugged into his jacket and slipped his sneakers on.

"Hey." Wilson was puzzled. "What - where are you going?"

But House ignored him and left. Wilson had to scramble to get his own shoes and coat on. By the time he got to the sidewalk, House was at the corner, and turning. Wilson figured he might know where House was going. It was the only place within walking distance that House could actually walk to without his leg hurting him too much.

Morrison's was a tiny place with twelve tables, a bar, one pool table, a juke box, a pinball machine and was Houses' habitual haunt. Wilson had caught up to House and slid in beside him at the bar. He figured that House figured after all he'd been through, no one was going to tell him he couldn't have a drink.

Wilson knew he certainly wasn't. He'd lost the right to care about his friends health. But he could still try. "You never really were on the wagon after the accident were you?" Wilson asked, ordering his own beer as House tipped his back.

House shook his head.

Wilson was surprised to see him admit it. Seems honesty was the word for the evening. "Ironically, it's probably one of the reasons you're still alive."

House nodded.

Wilson guessed the stutter bothered him enough that House didn't speak unless he had to. "Are we going to spend all evening here?"

House shook his head no.

"After this beer, will you let me walk you home?"

House drained his glass and nodded.

Wilson nodded too. It was an odd conversation. "I would have brought beer if you'd asked." But maybe House didn't want to ask him for anything anymore. He really couldn't blame the guy.

Once back at his apartment, House shed his jacket and cotton shirt, leaving his tee-shirt on. It was a black one with a pawn shop slogan on it. An old favorite. House sat on the edge of the couch this time in the same spot. Wilson took his spot opposite, watching his friend, not knowing how to broach the conversation they ought to be having. House was quiet and not only because of the stutter. From long association, Wilson recognized the signs of depression in him.

Thinking maybe he should leave but not wanting to, Wilson made small talk about work.

Until he chanced to look over and saw House leaning his forehead into his left palm, crying. They were House-typical tears: few shed and in an absolute silence that brokered no encouragement to comfort or a hand on his shoulder.

Wilson decided to forego Houses' usual demand for distance kept and sat beside his friend. House had lost a lot along the way. Maybe not his lover, but his speech and even his job for a while. Now _normal_ speech. Not to mention his music. Wilson figured his friend must have had little to hold on to lately. _I've not been much help_.

Wilson forced Houses' head against his shoulder. "Sorry." He said quietly. There wasn't anything beyond that worth saying.

The tears subsided quickly. "I have something for you." Wilson said.

He excused himself and left House to a few minutes of privacy so he could wipe his eyes and pretend he had not just been crying on his friends shoulder.

Wilson returned from a trip to his car with an oblong, triangle shaped box with a green bow on it. He placed it in Houses' lap.

"Open it."

House tore of the bow and lifted the lid. Inside was his Flying V electric guitar, repaired like new. The cracked section of sound board had been replaced, the neck and strings were new and it was clean and polished to a high shine.

House stared at it for a second, then over to Wilson.

"Try it."

House seemed thankful but looked at the instrument warily. "I c-c-can't p-pl-play a-anym-more."

"You can learn again."

House set the guitar carefully aside. "I-I'm f-f-f-fifty y-years old."

"Fifty is a tad ripened but not dead."

House just shook his head, but one finger touched the guitars edge like it was an old friend he hadn't seen for decades - one he thought it was too late to catch up on.

Wilson walked to the piano bench, lifted its cracked lid and sorted through Houses' music sheets and books. He found the one he wanted. Looked for and found Houses' metal music stand and assembled both in front of him by the couch. "Here. You can learn again."

House looked at the music book Wilson had chosen. "Basic Chords and Tablature to Popular Rock." A beginners book. One he had not had to look at since his college freshman year.

House didn't move.

Wilson crouched in front of him, his face turned dark and insistent. "House. Pick up the damn guitar and start again. You did it with your job. You surprised everyone. You impressed the hell out of me."

House picked it up and Wilson opened the book to the first page.

House stared at the strokes and lines of a language that had become foreign to him.

Wilson was there crouched down beside him, waiting for him to begin. House was swept with an overwhelming want. He had never in his life felt as lonely as he had when Wilson had told him goodbye. Even a night with Cuddy, which had helped, had done little to ease the pain.

House stretched out and kissed Wilson on the mouth very quickly but leaving no doubt as to his meaning.

Wilson almost jumped, such was his shock. He didn't. Neither did he move away as though he had just been stung. He sat on the couch beside his best friend, surprised at himself for his own sudden insight. He usually wasn't this on the ball when it came to House. "Is _that_ why you were at the bar that day, getting drunk in the middle of the afternoon?"

For an answer, House bit his lip and kept plucking the strings, playing nothing.

Wilson could see House was terrified he had just blown the whole getting back to friendship thing. He hadn't. Not by a long shot. "I thought you were jealous of me. I had Amber. I was spending so much time with her and you . . .had no one but-"

House did not deny any of it so Wilson went on, talking to him and to himself. "The negotiations with Cuddy for my time, the insisting on a schedule, the nagging whenever she made me late, the attempts to break us up . . .I must have been an idiot not to see it." Wilson placed a hand on Houses' shoulder. He didn't even flinch.

"You weren't jealous of my time with Amber or my having Amber. You were jealous of her having _me_."

House plucked idly at the strings. He did not look at Wilson.

Wilson nodded as though he'd been blind and his eyes had just opened a crack to the light. He knew a whole lot rested on his next words. "I suggested we could be a couple. I joked about it. But it wasn't a joke to you."

With a finger on his chin, Wilson turned Houses' head to look at him and was mildly surprised when House allowed it. House had been more touchy-feeling this evening than he had their entire friendship. Perhaps it was because now, he didn't mind it. Because now he wanted it.

"I don't know if this . . .this whatever it might be between us will be or how it could be. . . but I'm not _against_ the idea." Wilson kissed him back very gently. "Amazing what lies beneath the surface of a person."

Wilson saw a light flicker and then a shine appear and steadily grow in Houses' eyes. For a moment Wilson just stared, enjoying it. It had been too long since he had been able to do that - just watch the mans' endlessly expressive face. But Wilson realized the shine wasn't simply that he had pulled his head out of his rear and become regular James Wilson again, or even because he had kissed him. The shine - the spark - was the thing House did best. The job, the puzzle and the solution!

"Bu-bu-n-neath th-the s-s-surf-face." House said, staring at the wall or the floor or somewhere not in the room at all but in his mind where the trails lead to the obscurely incomprehensible place in which Houses' mind dwelled. House then stared Wilson in the eye. "It wu-was c-c-c-cancer. It _i-is _c-c-ancer. Y-you wu-were right."

A shot of horror rushed through him. House wasn't speaking of himself he hoped. "What are you-?"

House grabbed Wilsons face between his hands and planted a hard smack on his lips then, carefully setting aside his guitar, got to his feet as fast as he could, pulling his arms through the sleeves of his leather jacket. "C--come on. Wu-wu-we've g-g-g-gotta g-get to th-the ha-ha-ha-hosp-pital."

"Why? It's past eleven-thirty."

Instead of the work a lengthy argument would involve, House grabbed his arm and hauled him to his feet.

Wilson drove as fast as he dared. He supposed House could have called Chase and given him instructions over the phone but he figured they would arrive there before House had finished talking.

XXX

"I-it's T-C-cell La-la-lymph-ph-phoma." House told Chase as he limped into the conference room.

"How do you know?" Chase looked tired. He had bags under his eyes from having pulled a double shift looking after their dying patient since Cuddy had suspended House.

House thrust a thumb back at Wilson who was right behind him. "Wu-Wilson."

Wilson thought for a second. "Biopsy her hypodermis. It'll be positive for T-cell lymphoma. Lesions appear as truncated panniculites on the epidermis but they initialize as subcutaneous tumors. T-cell lymphoma acts on the hypodermis but in rare cases, like those with sever edema, push the cancerous cells to the surface where they often become infected or slough off, looking remarkable like Lupus lesions. Check her childhood medical records if any exist. A history of chronic childhood rheumatologies or Kawasaki - that this woman probably had as a child - can be a precursor. You need an accurate immunophenotyping of the cell infiltrate to be sure."

"So." Chase pointed his pencil at Wilson. "She's your patient now."

Wilson nodded. "Apparently."

Chase gathered his doctors coat. "Back to sharing again, are we?" he remarked before exiting.

Wilson smiled at House. House smiled back and walked to his white board. He wrote: B-B-BREAKF-F-FAST DUH-DUH-DARLING?

Wilson read the question. "Cute, but it's midnight and I have a patient. _Your_ patient. Your _dying_ patient - thanks a lot."

"It's th-the lu-lu-least y-you de-deserve. S-see y-y-you t-t-t-om-morrow?"

Wilson looked around, making sure no one was passing by the conference room. The blinds were open and he wasn't ready to declare to the world what he was about to do.

"I'll buy." He kissed House hard on the mouth.

House, licking his lips once, watched Wilson hurry to catch up to Chase. "N-no sh-sh-shi-shi . . ._**poop!"**_

House entered his darkened office. He sat in his swivel chair, enjoying the peace of his comforting domain. To his right nestled in the shadows lurked his little boxes of letters, symbols and the whistles he'd used to the chagrin of his employees.

On the desk in front of him sat his electronic voiced red button, surreptitiously pinching at his funny bone. House reached out and slapped it - _Oh Yeah!_

Then he pulled a large plastic garbage bag from his bottom drawer, limped to the box piles and began tossing them in it one at a time. The whistles he set aside for future possibilities of being an ass.

House was enjoying himself, thoroughly delighted to think about nothing.

Hell yeah.

XXX

END

Retrospect Chapter II is almost ready. 8)

There may be a sequel - if I can think up a worthwhile plot!

XXX


End file.
